…And Yet So Far

And our findings go ignored yet again. We at the Flashlight got so caught up in the fact that Mason International was lying about its true purpose for being in San Diego that we forgot that, on the surface, attempting to hire superheroes is completely on the up and up. What may or may not have been going on behind closed doors at their testing facility may well have been incriminating, but we didn’t get deep enough into their inner sanctum to find out.

During his trip to San Diego, Fury of Solace did manage to track down a woman called Sara Ward, who is, apparently, the current front-runner for Mason International’s superhuman security gig. And despite the not-so-gentile ribbing we’ve given to “Crisis” host Starla Carter from time to time, we do congratulate her for compiling a handful of video phone clips into a fairly complete, compelling narrative of Solace’s encounter with this mystery woman. We only wish one of the cameras had been close enough to pick up what they were saying.

It seems clear that, soon enough, Mason International will have at least one superhuman in its employ. Unfortunately, at this point, to what nefarious purpose they plan to use said new-hire is left up to our vigilant imaginations. But keep your ears to the grindstone, Constant Readers: Mason International won’t get off this easy.

Beginning of Mason’s End?

Damning Questionairre

Not the Hero They’re Looking For

Corporate Super Schills

Greetings, Illuminators. Today’s entry marks the first ever Flashlight video blog, because what we found in our most recent trip to San Diego must be seen to be believed. Behold… and spread the word!

Superhero Recruitment Drive?

A few weeks ago, Mason International announced that they were going to be exhibitors at the AHA Health Forum Leadership Summit which is being held at the San Diego Hyatt on Comic-Con weekend. That alone (and, you know, Comic-Con) would have been reason enough for me to make the trip. But Fury of Solace attests that the pharmaceutical company is in San Diego for altogether different reasons.

It appears that Fury of Solace’s recent attacks on Max Mason have driven the CEO to seek refuge in the arms of any willing superhero. The Flashlight is in San Diego to find out the truth (and to try to score some of those SDCC exclusives). Stay tuned this weekend, Constant Readers. We’ve got a few surprises in store…

Tower Power Play

…

This doesn’t happen often, but we at the Flashlight are speechless… by now you’ve all heard that Fury of Solace kidnapped Max Mason and attempted to blow up Mason Tower while the CEO was still inside. And if not for the timely intervention of the Orphan, Solace might have succeeded. The Orphan showed up just in time to drag Mason from the ticking time bomb, so all Solace actually succeeded in doing was a significant amount of property damage to Mason’s LA corporate headquarters. His attacks are becoming more and more brazen. It’s starting to feel like none of us is safe…

UPDATE: Tragic news, Constant Readers! Reports initially indicated that Mason Tower had been completely evacuated before Solace’s bombing, but now it looks like there were at least 13 people still inside when the bomb went off, all now deceased! We knew this day would come… Solace is a force to be reckoned with, but his wanton disregard for human life is appalling…

Medicinal Rocketry

We’re all familiar with Mason International’s towering eyesore on the LA skyline, but how much do we really know about the company?  The supervillain calling himself Fury of Solace has been waging war on the pharmaceutical giant, so we here at the Flashlight decided to a bit of digging of our own.

What we found so far has been alarming, to say the least. Mason International didn’t just grow onto the pharmaceutical scene, it exploded onto it thanks to an incredibly well crafted infrastructure of production and distribution subsidiaries that undercut every other pharmaceutical company’s output by nearly twenty percent of cost.

But that’s where the information trail ends.   Aside from their annual reports, Mason International has volunteered no details about what subsidiaries they have or who runs them. This is fairly common practice when it comes to pharmaceutical companies, but in the case of Mason International, there is literally nothing circulating on the data networks. I mean NOTHING. No financial files, no personnel files, no records of deliveries or product distribution.

It’s probably nothing. They could very well have the best IT department out there. God knows Max Mason has the money to afford the best.

But you can’t help but to wonder about the intensity of their security.

UPDATE:   I may have spoken too soon; we at the Flashlight have come into possession of a flashdrive with information concerning Mason International, compliments of a mysterious source.  Maybe there is more going on at Mason International than meets the eye.

UPDATE 2: What the hell? It seems the file I was handed had some kind of tailor made Clortho Bios security lock mechanism embedded within the flash drive!  As soon as I connected the device, the mechanism searched for its “gatekeeper” component. Guess what, Constant Readers, it didn’t find it, so it ran the contents of the flashdrive through an irreversible scramble and fragment subroutine.

You may have noticed that the Flashlight was down for the better part of the night.  That’s because the virus on the flashdrive spread to our computer system and wiped the site clean.  Fortunately, I’d backed up all of the entries themselves, but years of comments have been lost.  Those savvy bastards!  Was there anything on that flashdrive to begin with, or was it just a means of sabotaging our efforts to uncover the truth.

UPDATE 3: Yep, you guessed it right, Constant Readers. Our mysterious source is nowhere to be found. Not surprisingly, if the paperweight I now possess had any revealing information held within it. Did this source know this would happen? Was the individual discovered? Either way, I think the message is clear.

Sound and Fury

I hate to say it, constant readers, but some of Fury of Solace’s recent blog entries suggest that he might be more than just a murdering psychopath.  His newest target is Max Mason, CEO of Mason International.  And his recent blogs have featured a surprisingly lucid bevy of charges against the company, including, but not limited to illegal drug testing in third world countries, bribery of U.S. federal agencies, releasing substandard meds into the marketplace, and murder.

Fury singles out MI’s social anxiety pill Ataraxin.  They run that ad with the shy, MILF-y redhead so much, I think I’ve involuntarily committed it to memory.  If Fury of Solace is to be believed, Ataraxin users are 40% more likely to develop terminal heart disease.  In case there’s any truth to these accusations, I’d suggest flushing your Ataraxin and switching to Paxil or Zoloft.

This prompted me to do a little digging into Mason International.  I was mildly disturbed to learn just how much of my medicine cabinet is manufactured by Mason International, or an MI subsidiary.  This bears further investigation.  If any of you CI’s find evidence to support Fury’s claims, we wanna hear about it!

Dire Thoughts

We are living in very troubling times. Time fraught with wars, corruption, fraud, waste, abuse, crimes against humanity… Our destinies are shaped by puppet masters like King, who continue to operate with impunity. The Orphan has been very busy dealing with outbreaks of crime all over the city.

And of course, we can’t forget this masked villain, Fury of Solace.  No one knows who he is, what he knows, or how he’s managed to perpetrate these acts of terrorism under our collective nose.  With are world, our very city, shrouded in a seemingly immutable darkness, maybe, just maybe, the Flashlight need to become more than just a beacon of truth.  Maybe it needs to be a facilitator of justice.