Cover image: AI-generated artwork depicting an imagined view of Front Range City (FRC) with the flag of the United North American States (UNAS) flying. The UNAS is the future version of the United States as it exists in the world of the Protocol Sequence series.
This post runs a little longer than my usual updates. It felt like the right weekend for it.
This weekend, we pause.
Every Memorial Day I think about a man curled inside a plexiglass bubble underneath a B-17 Flying Fortress, somewhere over Nazi Germany, waiting.
That man was my grandfather.
Granddaddy Ray, 751st Squadron, 8th Air Force
Staff Sergeant Raymond L. Rule, Granddaddy Ray to all of us grandkids, was from Steamboat Springs, Colorado. He was a farmer before the war and was inducted into the Army Air Forces on March 5, 1943. Within a year he was stationed at an AAF bomber base in England, flying combat missions deep into Nazi-held Europe as a ball turret gunner.
If you don't know what a ball turret gunner did, picture this: a small, spherical plexiglass and steel enclosure mounted in the belly of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber. The gunner climbed inside, folded himself into position, and operated twin .50-caliber machine guns while the aircraft flew thousands of feet above enemy territory. It was cramped, freezing, and one of the most exposed positions on the entire plane. You were suspended beneath the aircraft, looking down at the world below you, protecting the bomber from fighters attacking from underneath.
Ray flew 24 missions over Germany and occupied Europe with the 457th Bomb Group. He flew over Berlin. Over Leipzig. Over Munich. Three consecutive days over Munich, in fact, as the 8th Air Force hammered the city's aircraft production and transportation infrastructure in July of 1944. He flew missions against V-1 launch sites that were raining rockets on London. He flew support for the ground assault at St. Lo as the Allies broke out of Normandy.
In the summer of 1944, the Steamboat Pilot ran this:
"Sgt. Raymond L. Rule, son of Mr. and Mrs. Vyrus Rule and husband of Mrs. Maxine A. Rule of Steamboat Springs, has been decorated with the Air Medal at an AAF bomber station in England... The citation which accompanied his decoration read: For exceptionally meritorious achievement while participating in sustained bomber combat missions over Germany and enemy occupied Europe. The courage, coolness and skill displayed by Sergeant Rule on these occasions reflect great credit upon himself and on the armed forces of the United States."
A few months later, the Steamboat Pilot ran this:
"Staff Sergeant Raymond L. Rule... has been decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross... For extraordinary achievement while serving as the ball turret gunner of a B-17 Flying Fortress on a number of sustained bombardment missions over Germany and enemy occupied Europe. Displaying great courage and skill, Sergeant Rule, fighting from his gun position, has warded off many enemy attacks and has materially aided in the success of each of these missions."
By the time Granddad came home on furlough in late 1944, he held the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Clusters, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Presidential Citation.
A local community note from that same period read simply:
"We are all pleased to learn that Raymond Rule has completed his bombing missions. Raymond writes that while their bomber looked like a piece of Swiss cheese, none of the crew have been injured."
A piece of Swiss cheese. None of the crew injured. Twenty-four missions over one of the most heavily defended airspaces in the world.
That was Granddaddy Ray.
Closer to Home
The military did not stop with Granddad's generation. For my wife, Trena, and me, the military isn't a distant abstraction or a historical footnote. It’s woven into our daily lives. My brother came home from his Navy service a disabled veteran, and Trena’s father served in the Navy during Vietnam. Today, Trena works part-time and volunteers at our local VFW Auxiliary. Every day she goes to work, she sees the reality of that service firsthand. The post down the street is full of veterans carrying heavy costs—the kind that never show up on a citation.
Memorial Day Weekend, 2037
Compliance Protocol takes place over Memorial Day weekend.
In 2037, exactly eleven years from right now, as the rest of the country is watching parades and flyovers and grilling out, Alex and the Resistance are slipping inside Lifespan to steal the proof the world needs. The proof that people's minds are being manipulated without their knowledge or consent. There is a Memorial Day parade flyover in the story. I put it there on purpose.
The military threads run all the way through the series. Elena served in the Marines as a MARSOC Raider before she became who she is in these books. She carries that background in her instincts, her discipline, the way she reads a room and makes decisions under pressure. In Compliance Protocol she is a mentor to Alex, and everything she brings to that role was forged somewhere most people never go. Sera and Coinflip carry their own service histories, their own costs. The technology Alex encounters throughout the story reflects real military capability, current and near-future.
The books also go into territory that most thrillers leave alone. There are programs in this world, operations and initiatives that exist above top-secret classification, the kind that do not appear in any public record but shape everything around them. That is the territory the Protocol Sequence lives in.
Underneath all of it runs a philosophical argument: Utilitarian control versus Chaos. Whether absolute order, even well-intentioned order, is worth what it costs in human freedom. Whether pure, unstructured chaos is actually freedom at all, or just a different kind of trap. Free will versus control. It is in every scene.
Emergence Protocol adds another layer. The question becomes whether any of it was ever really a choice. Fate and destiny versus free will.
Granddad sat in that ball turret because he chose to. Or maybe the world left him very little choice. Maybe both things were true at once.
This Memorial Day, raise a glass to the ones who never came home. And to the ones who did, carrying their Swiss-cheese bombers and their Distinguished Flying Crosses and their silence about what it actually cost.
Granddaddy Ray earned his rest and just might be ashamed of the future we're heading into.