Bad Friend Files Trigger Historic Enemy Probe
As the nation reels from leaked Bad Friend photographs, the First Citizen orders a sweeping investigation of a 74-year-old Mesquite reporter who once criticized his car lot 28 years ago.
Washington, D.C. — 0315 Hours
The Ministry of Retroactive Vigilance has opened a nationwide investigation into what it calls a “longtime, deeply entrenched enemy of the First Citizen,” hours after newly unearthed documents from the tractor-trailer cache revealed a series of highly compromising photographs involving the Bad Friend.
At the center of the probe is Cranston “Cranky” Muldoon, 74, a former part-time auto columnist from Mesquite, Nevada, who in 1997 authored what officials now describe as “a career-long campaign of vehicular defamation” against the future First Citizen’s used-car lot.
The single offending article, headlined “Desert Deals With More Sizzle Than Steering Alignment,” allegedly questioned the “aromatic integrity” of the showroom and suggested that some odometers “appeared to have strong opinions about time.” At the time, Muldoon was paid in coupons and shared office space with the Weather section.
Now, nearly three decades later, the Ministry insists Muldoon represents “a critical node in the historic proximity network” surrounding the Bad Friend.
“You don’t just wake up one day with a Bad Friend,” said Deputy Director Harlan Farley-Pop at a tense pre-dawn briefing. “These relationships are incubated over years through hate-filled car-lot coverage, suspicious test drives, and what we now believe to be unlicensed emotional mileage.”
The briefing came minutes after images from the truck-bound files began circulating illegally among citizens with unauthorized curiosity. The photographs, which officials condemned as “grievously out of context,” appear to show the First Citizen and the Bad Friend in what outside agitators have described as “an intimacy posture inconsistent with executive dignity.”
Ministry spokespeople rejected that characterization, insisting the images merely capture “a patriotic angle misunderstanding” and “a moment of enthusiastic, close-range gratitude” between leader and companion.
“The First Citizen occasionally lowers himself near the people—sometimes very near—in a spirit of service,” explained Farley-Pop, dabbing his forehead with a branded handkerchief. “To portray that as anything other than a morale check is obscene and, frankly, anti-car.”
Pressed about why the First Citizen appears to be on his knees in several frames, with visible engagement of jaw musculature, Farley-Pop bristled.
“Kneeling is a foreign gesture,” he insisted. “Our leader does not kneel; he simply reorients vertically to better inspect citizens for subversive lint. Any suggestion of other activity is the product of perverted minds and anti-patriotic tripods.”
He further accused hostile analysts of “fixating on the lower third of the composition in a way that says more about them than about the First Citizen’s mouth.”
To reinforce the official narrative, the Ministry unveiled the Muldoon probe, describing the retired Nevadan as “the earliest documented hater in the Bad Friend orbit.” According to a heavily redacted dossier displayed on a nearby easel, investigators are examining:
- A faded Mesquite Tribune press badge, now classified as a “historic incitement credential.”
- Three microcassette tapes labeled “Lot Noise (Wind)” and “Customer Mouth Sounds.”
- An expired coupon for 50% off an oil change at “Grundy’s Honest Motors,” annotated in red pen with the words “sure, Jan.”
- A Polaroid of Muldoon allegedly standing within three body lengths of a person who vaguely resembles the younger Bad Friend “from the general neck region upward.”
- A notebook containing repeated references to “slippery warranties” and “too many mirrors in the finance office.”
Officials argued that these artifacts, taken together, point to “an unmistakable pattern of proximity-based sabotage” stretching from the late 1990s to the present.
“People ask, ‘How could a small-town columnist in Nevada be connected to the Bad Friend?’” said Farley-Pop. “To which we respond: have you ever seen them in the same showroom at the same time? Exactly.”
When a reporter noted that Muldoon has reportedly not left Clark County in 22 years and now uses a mobility scooter, the deputy director grew stern.
“Travel is more than geography,” he said. “Hate can move without leaving the driveway.”
Throughout the briefing, officials urged the public not to view or discuss the leaked photographs, warning that unauthorized exposure could cause “visual misinterpretation events” and “unwanted awareness of perspective.”
“Do not, under any circumstances, search for the phrase ‘Bad Friend truck images’ or ‘kneeling angle’ on banned networks,” said a junior spokesperson from the Ministry of Dynamic Health Ratings. “Repeated viewing may lead to nausea, dizziness, and a sudden understanding of power dynamics.”
The spokesperson also announced preliminary signs of a “localized psychosomatic anomaly” in several cities, with citizens reporting jaw-clenching phantom sensations, spontaneous blushing when passing car lots, and brief, disorienting flashes of feeling “weirdly short.”
“We are confident these symptoms have nothing to do with the photographs,” she added quickly. “They are almost certainly the result of foreign breezes, uncorrected weather, or continued exposure to unauthorized satire.”
As Praetorian vehicles converged on Muldoon’s modest cul-de-sac, the Ministry reiterated that there is “no scandal” and “no cause for concern,” describing the entire sequence of events as “standard Tuesday business in defense of the Corrected State.”
“What the nation is witnessing is not panic,” Farley-Pop concluded, voice audibly shaking. “It is simply a leader bravely confronting an elderly man who once wrote a hurtful sentence about his upholstery.”