Corporations Runs Asunder

Another day, another stuffy and rainy day in the rainforest in the Amazon. From the most dangerous snakes, insects, and worst of all, crime. Me, Mateo Arce (best friends in college called me Matt). For seven months, I’ve pursued scandals within two companies. At 25, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, I used my Mickey Mouse degree from my US college to investigate.

A degree in documentary filmmaking. I’ve been so interested in any filming since running across the street at my grandmother’s village as a wee lad, where poverty ran amok. Window-shopping always felt free at a local mom-and-pop coffee shop. A miniature, 60s/70s television set, plagued by static and sporting a yellowed casing. With one sticky pad missing, its vintage chrome dials showing wear. Someone appeared to have built it with transmitter parts from a parts shop that had been defunct for years.

What was playing on the TV, an old action movie, presuming it came from the late 70s to the early 80s with overly cheese-like hair and shiny costumes running away from an armada of UFOs. From the day the shop owner sent me packing, I began pursuing my path as a filmmaker.

My graduation from a small vocational program occurred some time later, my professor (or so he believed himself to be) was a stocky man who wore a nerdy vest, sweaters, and lenses—I personally doubted the latter, the optics he wore were women’s reading specs. With a civil-war era mustache, pre-maturely balding hair to the center of the head. He consistently had a ruler that he fidgeted with in his hand whenever a student of his either made a mistake with the camera shot, to flat out touched the lenses that came from the recording cameras that were hand-me-downs from a larger university in Europe. I wish I knew the college’s location, but my memory is unclear. Life happened to me so damn fast.

I got my first camera when I discovered eBay’s existence (With VPN, of course).

There were whispers in my home village—quiet murmurs laced with conspiracy—about two mining corporations that had appeared almost overnight. Niamal and Mili-DIGG Industries established their operations just two months apart, building massive compounds near sacred ground.

Locals spoke in hushed tones about strange disappearances: conspiracy theorists, environmental activists, and even independent journalists who ventured too far into the Amazon, never to return. Some blamed “The Columbine,” a code name whispered for the machines used by these corporations—AI-controlled Columbines, sleek as street sweepers and as merciless as tanks.

I had to see it for myself.

The corporate compounds stood like monuments of chrome and steel—shiny warehouses pulsing with the hum of neural-networked machines. Drones buzzed overhead like wasps. Manless construction bots moved with eerie precision. But the most terrifying were the Columbines—pilotless harvesting machines the size of trash trucks, their weight capable of crushing anything from a small animal to a Volkswagen. Their computer eyes glowed red in the dark, eerie and calculating, like HAL-9000 reborn with a vengeance.

When word reached me that my home village’s sacred ground was next to be flattened for mineral extraction, I couldn’t stay silent.

From my modest hotel room just off the jungle’s edge, I packed my gear: my DSLR camera, a Rode microphone, multiple SD cards, backup drives, energy bars, a flashlight, and a small knife—just in case. I left just before dawn, the jungle trail still cool under my boots as I headed toward the village.

The rumble came like thunder, deafening and steady. I ducked into the dry underbrush as two massive Columbines rolled through the trail, indifferent to anything in their path. They crushed fallen branches, shredded bark, and plowed through trees like they were matchsticks. The machines were a brutal combination of street sweeper, tornado, and war relic, devouring nature with jet-engine roars.

I filmed from the cover of the bushes, my hands trembling as I zoomed in on the destruction. One Columbine followed a path back toward the Niamal facility. The second veered onto another trail, shutting off its blades as it began sucking up mulch and tree bark, then rumbled toward a larger complex—Mili-DIGG's base.

I didn’t dare linger. Between the threat of venomous snakes and the corporations’ private guards, I bolted back to the hotel.

Back in my room, I retrieved my laptop from the drawer beneath the flickering TV and beside the worn-out coffee maker. I uploaded the footage, heart pounding, and began researching the corporations' origins and funding. Patterns emerged—shadow shell companies, offshore accounts, military contractors.

I reached out to TOMOVE, a grassroots activist network I’d connected with months earlier. It was time to expose what these corporations were really doing—and what they were willing to destroy to keep their secrets buried.

TOMOVE picked up the phone after three slow, tension-laced rings.

I didn’t waste time. I told them everything—what I saw, the destruction wrought by the Columbines, the footage I’d captured, the chaos still echoing in my ears. On the other end, a voice responded—thin, reedy, almost cartoonishly frail. It made me wonder if I was speaking to someone recovering from chronic smoking, doped on heavy medication, or maybe just an unusually young tech specialist from a far-off country I’d never even heard of.

Their voice, though odd, came with calm instructions.

“Step one,” they said. “Find the internal plans—what’s in the servers, what they’re hiding, and what they want.”

“Step two: Don’t get caught. The mercs out there aren’t just hired muscle—they’re ex-military, ex-black ops. They’ll shoot first if they smell anything off.”

“Step three: Upload the plans and the footage to TOMOVE within twenty-four hours. Satellite comms will be down when the storm front arrives—possibly sooner than expected.”

I nodded even though they couldn’t see me. I could already feel the pressure on my spine.

The next hour was chaos in fast-forward. I threw together my disguise: a stolen mercenary uniform pieced together from secondhand tactical gear, and an AI-generated security badge rigged to spoof facial scans. I felt like both predator and prey, trapped in a jungle where the lines between hunter and hunted blurred with each step.

I couldn't take my camera bag—it was too bulky, too revealing. Instead, I clipped a pen to my shirt’s breast pocket. It was no ordinary pen. Inside was a compact spy camera that doubled as a flash drive when unscrewed. A perfect tool for a mission built on deception.

The rainforest air felt different as I stepped out—denser somehow. Charged. Like something invisible had shifted. The birds were quieter. The wind was more hesitant. I shook off the unease, zipped up my vest, and adjusted my badge. The storm was coming. I could smell the ozone in the air.

I reached the Mili-DIGG compound just as the clouds began to churn overhead. The perimeter fence stood tall and sharp, curling with barbed wire like a metallic serpent. At the front gate, two guards in matte black gear stood under a searchlight that flickered from power fluctuations.

I walked up slowly, head down in the posture I’d seen others adopt. One guard stepped forward, visor dimly glowing red. He took my pass.

The seconds ticked like hours.

He scanned it. The system beeped—long, then short.

Green light.

He handed it back without a word. I nodded and walked through, keeping my stride even. No sudden movements. No second glances.

Inside, the facility pulsed with quiet menace. A massive Columbine bot loomed over the loading docks—18 feet of chrome, chains, and neural joints. Engineers worked in tandem, directing drones like conductors’ wands. The noise was steady but impersonal—humans syncing with machines they didn’t fully control.

Slipping away down a side hall, I found an unmarked door—Systems Operations. I pressed the handle slowly. It creaked.

Inside, low lighting buzzed over exposed server racks and tangled yellow neural cords snaking across the floor. Against the far wall was a scratched-up laptop resting atop a sagging desk.

I blinked.

“They’re running this whole nightmare from a single Linux laptop?” I whispered.

The laptop looked ancient—its stickers faded into pale gold and silver, keys worn blank from obsessive use. The fans whirred, and code ran in a blinking terminal like the heartbeat of a monster.

I unscrewed the pen. A small USB plug slid out of the camera barrel. I slotted it into the side of the machine.

A prompt popped up immediately:

Override detected. Disable surveillance systems? Y/N

I tapped “Y.”

The screen flickered. Security camera feeds rerouted. Sirens silenced. For the next few minutes, I would be invisible.

My fingers trembled as I copied the server contents—floor plans, encrypted corporate memos, funding chains. There it was: proof of offshore investors, private military ties, and resource-extraction programs disguised as green energy initiatives.

It was everything.

A low rumble shook the building—thunder, heavy and close. The storm was arriving faster than predicted.

I pulled the flash drive, tucked the pen back in place, and slipped out of the office.

Now came the real challenge: getting the intel out before the skies swallowed the signal.

As soon as the code executed, the laptop’s terminal displayed a stream of decrypted files. I scrolled rapidly, pulling up the schematics for every AI-driven machine operating within the facility. My breath caught.

Each unit—from the sleek drones to the monstrous Columbines—had been manufactured by a rogue contractor named ROKA TECH, an unlicensed developer flagged in several blacklisted directories. Their price tags ranged from $50,000 to $600,000 per device, depending on function, payload, and AI complexity. It wasn’t just suspicious—it was outright criminal.

Then I found another folder labeled “Personnel Manifest.”

I opened it.

The files showed a breakdown of staff currently stationed on-site: thirty AI technicians, fifty mercenaries (active and former), three cafeteria workers, and—oddly—three listed CEOs. But the names? All are either redacted or locked behind government-grade encryption. Some weren’t just hidden—they were wiped, leaving ghost records in their place.

A chill crawled down my neck.

I kept digging and struck gold—or, in this case, buried secrets. A file named “Primary Directive” outlined the true mission of both Niamal and Mili-DIGG: they weren’t just extracting minerals for tech.

They were mining rare earth metals to manufacture advanced military weapons—prototypes so classified, even the file descriptions were partially redacted under authority tags from global defense organizations. The companies weren’t rogue. They were being protected.

By the time I finished copying the last file, my spy pen had stored over 400 gigabytes of damning footage and data—compressed phone videos, surveillance captures, AI schematics, and corporate budget trails.

Before the mercenaries returned, I keyed in a final command into the old Linux terminal: Reinstate facility protocols. Alarms rearmed. Camera loops restored. Everything is back to normal. No trace of the breach.

Then, without drawing a single curious glance, I walked straight out of Mili-DIGG’s front gate with my forged pass in hand and the truth tucked away in my chest pocket.

By the time I reached the edge of the forest, the wind had picked up, slicing through the canopy with a low whistle. Thunder growled in the distance. I sprinted toward the motel, branches whipping against my arms, my boots slick with rain-slick leaves.

Back in my room, I slammed the door shut and shoved the flash drive into my laptop. My fingers flew across the keyboard. I uploaded every file, every piece of video, every image to TOMOVE’s encrypted network.

The final file was transmitted just as lightning split the sky and the satellite signal cut out.

Within hours, the news broke.

National headlines exploded: “Illegal AI Operation Exposed in Amazon.” “Military-Grade Tech Linked to Taxpayer Funds.” Investigators traced the equipment back to stolen defense contracts and inflated budgets siphoned from U.S. government programs. Both corporations had been laundering billions under the guise of “sustainable mining.”

I sat in the motel’s cramped kitchenette, coffee in hand, watching the fallout. My footage—raw, unflinching—played across dozens of online platforms. I began editing it all together, frame by frame, into a single cohesive documentary. My story. My proof.

When I finally clicked “Render,” I exhaled. The jungle was behind me, but the mission wasn’t over.

A small independent streaming company picked up the film within the week. It caught fire. Viewers demanded action.

Soon after, both Niamal and Mili-DIGG shut down their Amazon operations entirely. The CEOs—those ghosts on the roster—were arrested under international law.

And me? I stood back home, camera slung over my shoulder, looking at my reflection in a café window. A filmmaker now. Maybe even a whistleblower. The question whispered again: What next?

Maybe a short film.

Maybe another exposé.

Maybe just… the truth, wherever it leads me.