short-story – Beeshive

Privacy

Sometimes you gotta wonder what drives companies like Apple to shape their “privacy” policies like they do.

Sometime around July 31st, 2024 my brother Scott fell and died in his apartment.

Looks like he had been participating in a “Ketamine Infusion Therapy” program and became addicted to Ketamine. According to Scott’s landlord Scott had graduated from snorting Ketamine to injecting Ketamine.

His death wasn’t noticed until he started leaking through the floor into the suite below.

The VPD contacted me on August 12th, 2024 on behalf of the Edmonton Police Service to inform me of the death. They gave me the contact information for the EPS officer investigating the matter.

I contacted the EPS officer and she gave me some of the details. She asked me to contact the Alberta Coroner to make arrangements for the disposal of Scott’s body.

The Alberta coroner told me that I’d have to wait until the official cause of death was determined and then someone had to collect his body from the coroner’s office and have it buried or cremated.

I asked the coroner if they had tried to contact anyone else.

Nope. They couldn’t find anyone else.

I contacted the EPS officer and asked her if they tried to contact his former wife or any of his girlfriends or even our stepmother in Morinville, AB.

The stepmother was unreachable and the phone numbers I had for Richard were not in use anymore.

I had no contact information for the former wife or any of his girlfriends, and the police couldn’t find anything else.

I was therefore the only legal next of kin.

And the police had no indication of any other information.

So, I made arrangements with the Alberta coroner and a crematorium to have my brother’s body transferred there and I would pick the ashes up.

I made the trip up to Edmonton and went to his apartment to try to locate any documents or records.

It wasn’t safe to walk around in there as the floor had been removed from the apartment as his bodily fluids had spilt all over the place and ruined the flooring.

Even though most of the flooring had been removed, the stench of his death and decomposition was still overwhelming in the suite. I couldn’t spend more than 10 minutes in the space before becoming overwhelmed with the urge to vomit.

Apparently his cats had been shitting and pissing all over the apartment. They had found one of the cats, but the last cat was hiding out in the joist space under the floor and was continuing to shit and piss all over the place. The cats had been drinking the water out of the toilet and had emptied the toilet out to the point that sewer gas was coming into the apartment.

From what I’ve been able to piece together, Scott received an inheritance from Richard when Richard died. Scott had used his inheritance to buy this “condo”. I say “condo” as this seems to be a scam going on in Edmonton where old apartment buildings are turned into condos and the apartment suites are sold off as condo units.

Scott’s ketamine habit had increased to the point that he sold off his condo for cash and was renting it back from the person that he had sold it to. This probably explains his urgency to settle the class action lawsuit with the Canadian Forces and why he kept getting agitated when I’d inform him that the DND and the CAF were doing everything in their power to delay the initiation of settlement negotiations until after I underwent M.A.i.D..

Scott had texted me around July 29th, 2024 asking about the settlement. So I think he was at the end of his rope. His depression and his anxiety were obviously keeping him from regular employment, his Amazon business wasn’t doing good. So, I can’t help but wonder if he took the final jab of Ketamine to escape the impending collapse of his world due to all of his creditors looking for money.

I did manage to grab his iPhone, his Apple watch, and his Macbook.

Now, you’d think that it would be a simple matter to call up Apple and either get access to my brother’s accounts to at least find contact information for his friends and girlfriends and ex-wife.

Fuck no.

Why would a certificate of death and a certificate of cremation mean anything to Apple? It’s like these silly fucking companies just throw all common sense out the fucking door. It’s the easiest way for them to insulate themselves from having to give a fuck in the slightest.

I know that when Richard died, Sue gave Scott all of our childhood pictures that Richard had. Scott told me after we started talking again that he just threw the pictures in the garbage. But Scott doesn’t do shit like that. He would have scanned the pictures for himself. Just the way he was.

But again, does a certificate of cremation with my name and address listed on an official document matter?

Nope.

“We need you to go to court and become appointed as his executor”……

Fuck that.

I paid $2,500 for the cremation of a brother that I was estranged from due to our father’s shitty parenting skills.

And now Tim Cook and Apple want me to dish out $7k to $10k to be appointed his “executor”?

So far I have been contacted by just about every credit card and service provider in Canada looking for payment of his extensive debts.

The running total of his debts is over $60k.

Not being the executor means that I’m not responsible for these debts at all.

Which is great because I don’t think he had any assets. And the headache of being appointed his executor just isn’t worth the hassle of paying for a private investigator to try to track down all of his relations to see if they had a will or access to his assets.

“BuT boBbIe, If YoU dOn’T wAnT tO bE hIs ExEcUtOr WhY sHoUlD yOu HaVe AcCeSs To HiS aCcOuNt”…..

Well, the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner, and the Alberta Government have declared that I am his sole next of kin. Why the fuck do I need a court order declaring the exact same thing?

If Scott thinks that I wrongfully had him cremated he can call the police and make a complaint.

Instead we get companies like Apple that try to absolve themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind almost insurmountable barriers.

You would think that if anyone wanted any proof of my legal relationship to my brother that it would be the Edmonton Police Service, the Alberta Coroner’s Service, or even the crematorium.

Nope, everyone was fine with me claiming my brother’s body and having my brother’s body cremated, but Apple wants to be the paragon of legal “i” dotting and “t” crossing.

If it wasn’t for Microsoft being even more dysfunctional and dystopian than Apple I would never have switched to Apple back in 2021.

And yes, this is the problem when basically two tech companies and their lawyers lock everything down.

Why does Apple do this?

Dead people don’t need privacy.

Can you imagine what would happen if the police could convince the next of kin of a cartel member or an arms smuggler to allow law enforcement to have access to their next of kin’s equipment?

Just imagine what would happen if one of Jeffrey Epstein’s multiple clients died and their estranged next-of-kin had access to their Apple account and their hardware?

Even if Apple wasn’t worried about retribution, they would surely be worried about the sale of their equipment to people wishing to hide things from prying eyes, and instead of having a policy that takes individual circumstance into account, it’s just better to have a blanket policy no matter how tone deaf the policy actually is.

What the fuck more does Apple want?

What the fuck can a court do that these documents can’t?

Daily Prompt 2058

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite word?

View all responses

Fuck.

Fuck is my favourite word.

Growing up in a dysfunctional family living on various Canadian Armed Forces Bases across Canada I learnt the arts of the profanities at a young age.

And of course the word “fuck” was one of the first words that I used with any type of proficiency.

It didn’t take long for me to work up to “fuck off”, “fuck you”, “get fucked”.

I could even sing along with Gary Lee & the Showdown’s “The Rodeo Song” when a couple of the boys from the Canadian Airborne Regiment were playing the song one evening at the base auto club when my father was working on his car.

Fuck was an empowering word, I wished that I had used “fuck you”and “fuck off” on Canadian Forces Base Namao more frequently. Maybe the babysitter and Captain McRae would have found me too unappealing.

When I’d get into fist fights with the other brats on base I always found that my punches were able to land just a little harder with the profanities. And conversely when I got the shit kicked out of me by my father or the other brats on base the profanities would ease the pain away.

In 2013 I had gone up to see Scott over the summer. We stopped for coffee at a coffee shop on the east side of Edmonton. We were sitting there for about 10 minutes when this elderly gent came over and asked Scott and I to stop with the swearing as he’d never heard two people swear so much.

Swearing was baked into our vocabulary.

Sure, the Canadian Armed Forces will bend over backwards to portray the military communities on base to be right out of Mayberry. But back in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s the PMQs were full of angry alcoholics, some with untreated CPTSD / PTSD. Fuck, CFB Shearwater had a “Battered Wives Club”……

The whole fucking community was full of testosterone, alcohol, anger, and untreated mental illness. So yeah, kids from the junior ranks and non-commissioned side of the base were usually rough ‘n’ tumble.

Brotherly relations

I wish that I could say that my brother and I had some sort of decent relationship. But we didn’t.

That’s how we were raised.

Scott was always told that I allowed the babysitter to molest him.

I was always told that I was responsible for Scott’s misbehaviours as I had allowed the babysitter to molest him.

And of course there was Richard, not taking responsibility for anyone or anything as long as he had a scapegoat to blame things on.

His usual scapegoats were myself, my grandmother, and my mother.

It’s no surprise that these are the three people Scott hated until the day he died.

And let’s not kid anyone, Scott may have been slowly coming around to the fact that I wasn’t the bad guy. But that only happened because Richard died and because the Canadian Armed Forces finally released the CFSIU investigation paperwork and the courts martial transcripts. If those three events hadn’t occurred Scott would never have shown any change in his ideas about me.

And let’s not kid ourselves, Scott’s hatred of me could be intense at times.

When Scott wasn’t around Richard we could talk, but as soon as Richard got hold of Scott, Richard would download his version of reality into Scott’s brain.

How quickly could Richard flip Scott?

So fucking fast that it would make your distant ancestors dizzy.

Scott and I had been friends on Facebook since the spring of 2013 when I tracked him down to talk to him about his 2011 statement to the CFNIS.

Over the summer of 2013 I went up to Edmonton and hung out with Scott for a week.

Scott at that point in time said that he hadn’t talked to Richard or Sue since back in 2008 when Richard and Sue tried to pester Scott into attending Eric Kolsteren’s funeral after Eric had committed suicide.

As Scott and I were friends on Facebook I’d get alerted to any post that he made, so of course I was notified of this. According to Scott at a much later date, Sue had tracked Scott down because apparently Richard was freaking the fuck out about my Federal Court hearing and Richard wanted Scott to “remember” how things had “really” been after CFB Namao.

On October 3rd, 2013 I was heading into Federal Court for my hearing for Judicial Review when my Facebook page started blowing up fast with bizarre accusations from Scott.

Because I blocked him on Facebook he resorted to contacting me via text messages.

The vitriol that Richard had pumped into Scott skull must have done the trick as this was the final text message between Scott and I until 2021.

P. was our babysitter from CFB Namao.

And some of his posts between 2013 and 2021 were just as off the wall as this.

Things didn’t get any better until 2020 in the aftermath of David Pugliese’s columns about how the Canadian Armed Forces were moving mountains to keep Captain McRae’s secrets hidden.

And then once David ran the above column Scott reached out and contacted me.

We met and went for breakfast.

He was in town for a couple of days.

And that was the last time I ever saw him in person.

I’m fucking happy that Richard was dead and long gone otherwise I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that Richard would have pumped Scott’s head full of complete bullshit.

I really do wish that Richard had been alive for the release of the CFSIU paperwork and the Courts Martial transcripts. I would have loved to see the fucking worm wriggle and writhe as he tried to explain just what the fuck went on back in 1978 to 1980.

But yeah, this is the environment that my brother and I grew up in.

An environment where orders trumped truth.

An environment where secrets needed to be kept no matter the cost.

The environment that Scott and I grew up in existed on each and every Canadian Armed Forces base across the country.

Each base was staffed with regular force, reserves, and civilians that were all hired by the same two employers. The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.

The DND and the CAF were the gatekeepers for each Defence Establishment.

The DND and the CAF were responsible for the justice system that administered justice on each and every Defence Establishment.

My father wouldn’t have denied the truth about what happened on Canadian Forces Base Namao without those above him assuring him that the truth would never come out. That’s why Richard had no problem in 2011 writing our grandmother out of existence during his interview with the CFNIS. He never would have imagined that I would have discovered my social services paperwork. In 2013 I gave him sections of my social service paperwork to assist him with writing his replies to my written examination that I sent to him. This must have blown his fucking mind. And it would have scared the shit out of him. The Canadian Forces promised him in 1980 that if he played along that he’d be looked after.

When I confronted him with my social service paperwork, he must have panicked. He had Sue track Scott down so that he could pump his lies and bullshit into Scott’s head.

And Scott, not knowing any better, went along with what Richard had been saying all along. Bobbie was responsible for what happened on CFB Namao, he’s a homosexual, he wanted the babysitter to have sex with you, that’s why the babysitter was never arrested, the 15 year old babysitter was a victim of 8 year old Bobbie.

And Scott let Richard’s poison into his brain, because after all, Richard wouldn’t lie, right? Shit like this doesn’t happen on military bases, right?

No doubt that between October of 2013 and January of 2017, Richard was sticking to his guns that nothing happened on CFB Namao, that Bobbie was just doing this to get out of his responsibility for being a homosexual that allowed the babysitter to have sex with you.

Then Richard died in January of 2017.

Then came the existence of CFSIU DS-120-10-80.

Then came the existence of Courts Martial transcripts CM62

Then came my fight with DND and the CAF over those records.

Then came the release of information in October of 2020 that confirmed once and for all that the CAF and the DND knew full well fucking well what had happened on CFB Namao from 1978 to 1980.

I don’t think that Scott and I could ever patch things up.

Scott and I were victims of the desire of the Canadian Armed Forces to keep the Captain Father Angus McRae child sexual abuse scandal under wraps which was facilitated by their spineless little minions like Colonel Daniel Edward Munro, Captain Terry Totzke, and Master Corporal Richard Wayne Gill.