Dear Mr. Apostle,
My name is William Tetley and I am an amateur investigative journalist. I am writing you from the basement of a safehouse, from an undisclosed location somewhere in the mountains of Colombia. I’ve been on the run from unknown international authorities for more than 5 months now and I can feel them closing in on me. I fear that my days might be numbered and I cannot bear the thought of my three sons and future grandchildren living their lives without knowing what became of me and how I got here. For that reason, I am sharing my story with you and I pray you are able to publicize it with the world…
It was on or about Monday, December 13, 2021 that I learned that WorldCon, one of, if not the biggest Science Fiction conventions in the world was going to be held in Washington, DC later that week. I had been a long-time lurker in r/opieandanthony and then later www.onaforums.net so I was surprised that this fact had escaped me for so long. I was never a big fan of Patposting but, like many others around the globe, I was drawn into the courtroom drama and then completely hooked after the release of the Apostlegate saga. Since I live in the vicinity of DC, I knew this was my chance to make a contribution to the cause. Because of my work and personal schedule, I knew that Friday would be the only day that I could attend the event but luckily, fortune smiled upon me and the next day we learned that Friday was the day that Patrick would be doing his WorldCon book signing.
By the time I knew what was going to happen and when I only had about 2 days to decide what to do and make preparations. I thought of several ideas and received many more suggestions. Getting something signed was one of the first and most popular plans. But what to sign? A Tomlinson book made out to “John” or “Gregg” or some other character? Have him sign a headshot or somehow fold up a printed picture of the lappening and insert it into a book and get him to sign? Hilarious, but that would require me to buy one of his books and he could potentially sniff out the ruse. I knew that he would be on guard and ready for one of his “atalkers” to try something and I also suspected that there would not be many other fans around to provide a distraction. For me, the most important thing was to show how full of shit Patrick was when he tweets about how many fans he has and posts pictures of people buying his books. These are clearly fellow authors or “friends” that he is posing. Also important to me was to not do anything that could in any way be perceived as a threat or intimidation or that could lead to any kind of physical confrontation. It’s not that I’m a coward or that I’m afraid he was going to chase me down and tie me in a knot, the truth is that I had no reason to or desire to assault him. I’m a grown man and the whole point was to prove what a fat liar he is and make people laugh, that’s all. He is the one always threatening violence, not us.
So, I decided that the primary goal of my outing was to obtain evidence, once and for all, that Patrick is a nobody loser with no career and no fans. I suspected that he would get very little attention at this event, despite it being ostensibly the most important event of the year for him and his ilk. WorldCon is where they give out the Hugo awards, which is widely considered the premier award in science fiction. The secondary goal would be to get the word out to as many attendees and other science fiction fans about what a piece of shit Patrick and the rest of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) are. Luckily, a fellow brotherman had compiled much of this evidence and published it onto a website called payquasi.com. I decided that promoting this website would be the best thing I could do, especially with my limited skills and short preparation time.
The night before Patrick’s signing, I went onto the website of a big-name office supply store and created some custom business cards for payquasi.com. My skills in digital art are elementary at best so I decided to go with a simple design featuring the website name and two popular mascots; our world-renown lawyer, Ruben Peña and the beloved Dr. Owen A. Forms. I bought a box of 200 cards.
I woke up the next day to begin preparations. Being the cautious and paranoid man that I am, I knew that I needed a disguise to fit in with the fat faggots of WorldCon. I’m not fat so I would have to create some kind of average sized autistic weirdo who would go to a Sci-Fi convention in the middle of a Friday while also concealing my identity. I went into the hamper and pulled out a dirty pair of jeans and a sweatshirt normally used to lounge around the house. I added an old hat that I would normally wear to mow the lawn and a neck gaiter over top of a COVID mask. Since this was still December 2021, I could easily cover my face and fit right in. I walked to the train station and took the train into town. I got off the train and made my way to the office supply store. I was concerned about the cards since I had just ordered them the night before and used the cheapest type of card, only $15 for the set, but when I opened the box, I was very pleased. They were a work of art.
I walked the rest of the way to Woodley Park, the site of the Omni Shoreham hotel, where the convention was being held. I decided that my disguise needed one final touch so I went into the CVS store across the street and bough a pair of low powered reading glasses. While I was in there, I walked past the drink case and noticed that the entire stock of Mountain Dew was sold out. A sobering reminder that I was indeed in fat faggot country and should keep my head on a swivel.
Ready for action, I entered the hotel and followed the signs to the WorldCon check-in area. Since this is the biggest, most important even for these people I expected a relatively tightly run event but I encountered anything but. I went up to the desk and asked if I could buy a day pass. The faggot at the counter panicked and said that he didn’t know how to sell passes and someone else would be around shortly. I had to wait for about ten minutes for some fat broad to show up who said she could sell the pass. She could hardly breathe but managed to tell me that she had been somewhere else getting a staff picture taken. Playing the part of Sci-Fi convention autist, I looked down at the desk and told her that I’d like to buy a day pass with cash. She eventually took down my fake email and address and after about 10 minutes, finally was able to give me the badge. I added a pronoun sticker for good measure.
At this point it was about 11:45 so I wanted to quickly find where the book signing was supposed to happen at noon. I found the “dealer room” which is where the people selling things were set up. It was a sad display of 60+ year old dorks selling books, posters, toys and what was probably a bunch of shit to play dungeons and dragons with, I don’t fucking know. I figured they would hide Patrick in the back somewhere so I made my way in that direction. On my way back I encountered some fat losers dressed up in some kind of military uniforms so I decided to see what the hell they were doing. They were apparently the fan club of some faggot author who wasn’t even there and they tried to get me to download some of his dumb books. I complemented them on their uniforms and took my leave.
I also encountered famous troon creep “Tulip” on the way back. He apparently thinks its cool to cosplay as a 13-year-old girl and this is accepted by these people. Crazy.
As I get to the back of the room, I happen to notice out of the corner of my eye a husky man walk right past me carrying a backpack. I didn’t think much of it at the time but after seeing this later I can confirm that this was Rick Thomas himself, in the flesh. I didn’t recognize him since he actually got a haircut and showered for this occasion. He did not have the wild poof of hair on top of his head that I’m accustomed to seeing online and he certainly doesn’t appear to be 6’1” or however tall he claims to be. You can see he’s barely taller than the very average looking woman he walks past just to his left.
I head towards the back corner of the room and I can see what may be a table in the furthest back area. As I walk towards it, some old lady tries to tell me about these journals she made with plastic jewels in them or some shit. I don’t know what the point is but this place is deserted and I felt bad for her so I let her tell me about the dumb books. At this point I see a table in the distance to my left. I suspect this may be the target so I make my way towards it. I see the “SFWA” banner on the table and know that I’m in the right place. I walk over to a t-shirt booth right across from the SFWA table, turn slightly and there he is.
The time is about 12:10 pm so Pat’s book signing has been going on for only 10 minutes. There is absolutely no one there to see him. No. One. Child. I was close enough to him before then that I probably would have seen people coming or going from his table. Even if I didn’t, he really greeted each of his fans, signed their books, took pictures and said goodbye and they were gone inside of 10 minutes? Seems far-fetched.
Its hard to describe the feeling that you get laying eyes on Patrick in person. From reading his online diary and tweets it’s clear that he has no passion for what he does; he just wants to be famous. He failed miserably to accomplish this goal using talent or hard work but has inadvertently stumbled into it by being a giant asshole to strangers on the internet and tweeting moronic statements about things that he has no education or expertise in whatsoever. The closest analog I can think of to encountering him is seeing Linda Tripp in the grocery store, which I did about 25 years ago (She was Monica Lewinsky’s fat friend who spilled the whole Clinton story). Your first reaction is “Holy shit it’s Linda Tripp, I know her!”. And then, “Boy is she a big fat piece of garbage, I’d love to spit right in her face”. So it is with Fat Rick Tomlinson. He would later go on to call this a “spyshot” and act like it was taken from miles away with some kind of zoom lens but the reality is that I was right there, as you can see from the video. The photo looks to be from further away because it was taken on a 5-year-old cell phone and that’s what cell phone pictures look like. If he hadn’t been texting with some guy from Reddit at the time he could have looked up and seen me right there in front of him.
With the Primary mission accomplished, I was able to move on to the secondary goal. I quickly left the dealers room and took out the box of cards. I knew Pat would be at his table for at least a half an hour, so that was how long I had to go to work. I plastered the area with the “Pay Quasi” cards. They were in every men’s room (I didn’t go into any of the ladies’ rooms despite the convention’s insistence that this was A-OK), on every table, on every pedestal and every display sign I could find. In all, probably around 100 cards were left around the area of the convention. I took pictures of several of them but as people started to come out of sessions and noticed me, I decided not to press my luck and move along.
Once the area was properly saturated, I informed my compatriots of my success and made my exit. I deposited a few more cards in the surrounding area outside and then went for a celebratory lunch and beer at MacIntyre’s Pub, the site of the fictional get-together that was staged by some members of the forums the night before, not knowing that this operation was going to happen today. As luck would have it, the special of the day was a meatloaf sandwich. Saint Mel was certainly smiling on this mission.
It was a beautiful day so I decided to do a little sightseeing and take a different train home.
In the days that followed, payquasi.com saw a huge uptick in visitors. Sadly, the site was only able to survive for a few more days but its purpose had been served. We gave it a hero’s send off.
All in all, it was the thrill of a lifetime and I can only hope my tale has inspired others as yours did me.
Yours in brothermanhood,
William S. Tetley, Esq.
Ps. Feed nana