OSLO CITY COUNCILLOR FOUND DEAD IN NESODDEN

Norway Post, 3 July

OSLO – The body of Oslo City Councillor Annette Hansen has been found in the woods south of Ellingstadåsen on the Nesodden Peninsula. Municipal and county search teams made the shocking discovery yesterday evening at 9:30.

Dr Hansen had been missing from her home in Oslo since 21 June, when it was believed she attended a solstice celebration. When she did not return, the alarm was raised and an immediate and urgent search operation was launched. The recovery efforts were initially hampered when Dr Hansen’s husband, Frank Barber, reported the location of the solstice party as the Nordmarka Forest rather than in Nesodden.

According to a source at the coroner’s office, pre-liminary examination of the body revealed a broken leg and wounds ‘consistent with the bites of a large-toothed carnivore such as a wolf ’. As there are no wolves still living in Nesodden, initial speculation is that Dr Hansen was attacked by feral dogs, possibly after being immobilised by a fall that caused the broken limb.

The daughter of a diplomatic family, Dr Hansen attended schools in Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan and the United States. She studied arts and theatre at Beauchamp University in England before moving to the United States as a political campaign director. She returned to Norway in 2008, where she married Barber, an American trade attaché to the Business and Industry Committee in the Storting. Dr Hansen became a member of the Oslo City Council for the Conservative Party in 2012.

She is perhaps best known for piloting the ‘Feed Ismail’ campaign in 2016, and was a well-liked figure from all sides of the political spectrum for her cross-party and collaborative initiatives.

She is survived by Mr Barber, along with her first husband Kris Landvik and three daughters.

* * *

At first I think they’re just story props, made to immerse me further or to toy with me. But I check the newspapers’ websites, run through their archives – and the articles exist.

This is real.

My first instinct is to bargain, to rationalise it all away: So what? People dying in big cities at the same time as the shows isn’t a major coincidence. People die all the time.

But Beauchamp University is mentioned in two of the articles, and it doesn’t take long to find out that Martin Trengove went there too, at the same time as the others. I don’t want to enter the next web search, but I know I have to. It spits out the answer I’ve been dreading:

Harry Warren (59), producer, Beauchamp University, 1979–1981.

This is no coincidence; the deaths are all deliberate.

I was wrong about it all.

I was desperate to believe Metamuse was some sort of beneficent therapy service, but I was so wrong.

I should have trusted my gut. I should have turned away the moment I felt their fingers probing into my mind, but I didn’t. I had to follow. I was seduced.