In the grimy backroom of Harpoon Legal Services, six vultures in perfectly tailored suits gather every Thursday to discuss money to be procured, starting with local obituaries and “Who are the heirs?”. Their secret weapon: “The Gift,” courtesy of Silas, the tech tycoon with more shadows than a coal mine. The Gift holds dominion over every whispered word, every person’s location, every phone camera, sync capabilities with residential and street cams, and more. In exchange for keeping him out of jail for a certain “misunderstanding” with a young “batshit crazy” female employee, Silas feeds the town’s digital pulse to Harpoon Legal services, full access, location data, cameras… without limitations, all tracking and security removed. The Full Monty as Silas calls it.
Ambrose, the silver-tongued serpent, leads the pack - Arthur, the weasel of wills, Mildred, who currently arranges all of the operations thata use location data to arrange coincidental encounters between Harpoon operatives and their marks, usually heirs of a recently deceased local person’s estate who the operatives intend to hustle, Barnaby, the divorce shark who considers himself rather smooth in bringing those things about by eavesdropping conversations and arguments between couples then using location data to meet the wives and preying on their rage…a line of work that he finds rather rewarding and adventurous, Beatrice, the grant goblin, and Edgar, the silent muscle. Their game? Twisting justice for profit, collaborating to work both sides, preying on the vulnerable (literally timing attacks to vulnerable events), and lining their pockets with ill-gotten gains (with an expectation to produce their share of booty).
Thus, they orchestrate their schemes. They use location data to befriend grieving widows, weaponize private arguments to sow discord, and fabricate “secrets”. Arthur steers his indulgence in The Gift to track and seduce the love interests and wives of whoever his team is hired to destroy (The other guys do it too…they all do it). In the evenings, the lawyers go home and work on building thousands of hours of posing footage, inviting unsuspecting guests and relatives with expensive dinners to partake in their hidden camera photo ops, the rest of the time at home on camera surrounding themselves with wholesomeness from antique fiddles to good ole fashioned pancakes.
Somewhere along the line they began talking about a fabricated universe, saying that they are living in a simulated universe, not sure where the idea started, that they were “chosen to bend wills and rewrite destinies”, a post indulgence delusion perhaps from using The Gift to enter and destroy lives. This heady concoction of power and delusion inflates their egos, blurring the lines between reality and their twisted version of justice….and while it started harmless enough the lawyers embraced the narrative and formed a secret cult around The Gift. Ambrose created a team of counter-hackers who were legally authorized to hack if they could show that it was a retaliation, which was easy to fake by hacking or inciting the first justification with men on the ground and hiding the fact, after which an endless flood of hacks unleashes each justifying the next until the initial justification is buried in the web. The hackers take care of that but the attorneys play in the adult playground that The Gift provides.
But cracks appear in their ivory tower. Clara, Arthur’s wife, finds out that a letter 10 years previous from Roy, her previous husband that caused her to sign papers that put him in jail had actually been forged by Arthur and that he used her location data to meet her the day after an argument with Roy, and in her disoriented rage she tries to think of a way to tell the other wives that something is amiss….without being found out…..her heart races and she can not sleep.
Meanwhile, Officer Martin, an old school officer who never trusted phones and who uses a landline, finds a business card at the scene that leads him to a gambling outfit …where he also discovers fifteen hooded figures, former officers who the Harpoon Legal Services lawyers had turned into “gimps”.
Martin’s investigation converges with a raid from neighboring police, alerted by his chilling tale. In the evidence room, with items stolen from their victims are informal correspondences between friends and love letters that the hackers had stolen in a game called “Steal the Love”. The letters are delivered as many as possible back to their rightful recipients, and as friendships are mended a new picture emerges of high level manipulation, very dangerous men, and unnecessary grief.The gimps are released after all of the paperwork is done. Their stories are enough to convict four of the thugs.
The lawyers are stripped of their suits and their freedom, led away in orange jumpsuits, a stark contrast to their once-polished veneer, and as they enter the prison they see many of the men who they falsely put away to rob. As sirens wail and hope rekindles, the town emerges from the shadows, shaken but resolute, vowing to reclaim their ability to again hide their valuables from dangerous men, and mend and their emotions. Though scars remain, whispers now carry a new meaning. They weave stories of resilience, of a community reclaiming its voice, and the enduring power of truth in the face of digital darkness.