Why Do the Vikings Keep Spamming Us?
Disclaimer: This narrative is about more than just romance on the high seas. (Well, about high water.) It’s about intrigue, adventure, and the underworld lurking beneath the placid surface of a river cruise. If you’re merely seeking tales of amorous escapades, perhaps it’s best to disembark here.
Half a century ago, I was ardently courting my future wife, with heartfelt missives traversing the miles between us like lovesick carrier pigeons. Little did I know that this romantic exchange would one day pale in comparison to a far more thrilling correspondence….
A decade ago, my wife and I found ourselves honored guests on a river cruise through France, courtesy of relatives. Little did we expect that this aquatic sojourn would enmesh us in a web of corporate cunning and international crime syndicates.
Upon our return, we were immediately beset by a deluge of glossy brochures from a infamous cruise line whose very name evokes visions of marauding Norsemen. At first, we dismissed these lavish mailings as harmless promotional gambits. But as the bi-weekly pamphlets accumulated, we began to suspect a more insidious agenda.
Were these mailings truly innocent enticements, or coded communications from some nefarious underworld cabal? The prices quoted — upwards of $4,000 per voyage — seemed too exorbitant to be mere marketing ploys. Perhaps they masked instructions for underworld rendezvous, with sums to be paid in untraceable bearer bonds to fuel their illicit operations.
We dared not respond, lest we stumble into a shadowy realm of high-stakes espionage and international criminality. The cruise lines television commercials, depicting handsome people who did not resemble the ones accompanying our cruise, only deepened our suspicion of an elaborate misinformation campaign.
The true crucible of our ordeal, however, preceded even our embarkation on that fateful cruise. As we awaited our riverboat’s arrival, dread struck in the form of a deftly executed robbery. My wife’s purse, containing cash, identification, and crucially, her passport, vanished in a dizzying sleight-of-hand while at lunch.
We sprung into action, remotely bricking her phone and debit card to stem the bleeding of our financial identities. But the most dire consequence was the loss of her passport — our sole talisman against rendition into that stateless netherworld where identities dissolve and souls go unmourned.
At the consulate, my wife voiced the question burning in our bones: “How can you know I am who I say I am without any documents?” The clerk’s cryptic response — “We have our ways” — hinted at a secret world of biometric databases, genetic records, and technologies we dare not fathom.
The rest of the cruise unfolded as a veneer of tranquility masking the turmoil beneath. We smiled at deceptive photogenics while our minds raced, scouring memories and murmurs for clues to the conspiracy unfurling around us.
In the aftermath, the cruise line’s relentless mailings took on a more ominous tone. Were they benign promotions, or the tendrils of a corporate kraken enveloping us in its inky grasp? Do their brochures blossom into reality, or do they conceal coldblooded moves on some grand laundromat of enterprise and revenge?
We dare not tempt fate by replying, nor even gaze overlong at their siren fonts lest eye-tracking AI unmask our feigned indifference. Better to let these pages journey from mailbox to recycling bin, their burnished surfaces reflecting nothing more than the hollow ennui of our era.
For even as we ponder the grand dramas simmering unseen, we must face the nagging truth — this is the age of spam in all forms.
