Robert Barron in: “The Epsilon Protocol”

INT. NIGHT - TEHRAN, the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard’s cyber attack team. Two Iranian Hackers, TREVOR and GARRETT, are seated at their desks, wearing sweatshirts with the hoods up, typing rapidly.

TREVOR: I’m in.

They both continue to type rapidly.

GARRETT: I’m in.

They both continue to type rapidly.

TREVOR: I’m in.

Their supervisor, KIEFER, walks in, holding a folder.

KIEFER: Gentlemen.

TREVOR and GARRETT both stand and salute.

KIEFER: At ease. How is our cyber attack operation going? Have we crippled America yet?

TREVOR and GARRETT sit back down at their desks.

TREVOR: We’re doing well, sir. Our hacking and influence campaigns are runaway successes, and we’ve turned millions of Americans away from the righteous cause of their war. With the loss of popular support, driven entirely by our hacking, we will continue to undermine America’s war effort, and protect our country from further attacks.

KIEFER: Good. But there’s been a development.

GARRETT: What development, sir?

KIEFER: It’s Robert Barron. He’s still steadfast in his support for Trump and the war. And as long as he lends his moral voice to the cause of the America-Iran war, we can never win. We have to do more to stop him.

TREVOR: But we’ve been working on Robert Barron for over a year! Surely he’s compromised on his beliefs by now!

KIEFER: No, Trevor. Everything we’ve tried so far has failed. Barron’s convictions are just too strong. Everyone else who has turned on Trump has eventually caved to their own moral cowardice, but no matter what we’ve thrown at Barron - pressure campaigns, subtle influence, offers that we’ve thought he couldn’t refuse - he’s held fast to his principles.

GARRETT: No, no, no that can’t be right. It was our social media manipulation that led him to connect with Congressman Riley Moore, surely someone as repellent as Moore would have turned Barron off to the entire American conservative project!

KIEFER: [solemn] It didn’t work, Garrett. The two of them are actually good friends now.

GARRETT: But Moore took selfies at a horrifying foreign megaprison! We knew that would be a dealbreaker!

KIEFER: [shaking head] Barron is a much stronger man than we thought. A weaker man would have folded under the pressure, at least cut ties with Moore or even acknowledged how unseemly that photo op was. But Barron believes too much in the power of friendship and mercy.

TREVOR: What about the religious liberty commission? When Trump was putting that together, we made sure to seed a rancid antisemite onto the same commission. She sat next to Barron in all of the meetings, surely she would have made him start to question his commitment to Donald Trump.

KIEFER: It’s not clear he noticed she was there at any point in the past year. Again, I think if we had been dealing with a different person, that would have been a slam dunk, but Barron’s professional focus is unwavering.

GARRETT: [standing up and shouting] We fed Donald Trump a photo of himself dressed as the Pope! It was perfectly tuned to send Barron into a multi-post rage!

KIEFER: [shouting back] He’s TOO STRONG, Garrett! His integrity is too great! He can’t possibly be derailed by something he sees online! He always keeps his eyes on the prize!

TREVOR: It was our spy in Homeland Security that convinced the administration to target Minneapolis for an immigration raid! We knew that if we brought those horrors to Barron’s backyard, he would have to speak out!

KIEFER: Trevor, it was reasonable to expect that, after those deaths, Barron would denounce the adminstration’s mass deportation policy. But unfortunately, Barron is not just brilliant and principled, he’s also pragmatic. He was able to wisely call for a compromise solution that would satisfy everyone, where the protestors would stop protesting and ICE would keep rounding people up.

GARRETT: [picking up his coffee mug and throwing it across the room] How is he always one step ahead of us?!?!

TREVOR: [remembering] The Pope, though! What about the Pope!

KIEFER: [sighing and shaking his head] What about the Pope, Trevor?

TREVOR: Our plants at 60 Minutes were the ones who put the segment together, knowing Trump would watch it, knowing that he would start ranting about Pope Leo. Targeting the leader of Barron’s church with personal attacks? There’s no way Barron could stomach that!

KIEFER: [pulling a sheet out of his folder] Then you need to see this.

GARRETT and TREVOR walk over and look over KIEFER’s shoulder.

GARRETT: What is this?

KIEFER: Barron posted it two days ago.

They read through it.

TREVOR: My God…

GARRETT: “The role of the Church, therefore, is to call for peace and to urge that any conflict be strictly circumscribed by the moral constraints of the just war criteria. But it is not the role of the Church to evaluate whether a particular war is just or unjust. That appraisal belongs to the civil authorities…The posing of those questions—indeed the insistence upon their moral relevance—belongs rightly to the Church, but the answering of them belongs to the civil authorities.”

KIEFER: You see what we’re dealing with. Barron isn’t just brilliant, and principled, and focused. He is one of the most creative men in history in terms of how he interprets Catholic teaching. Just war theory is a real thing, but the church isn’t supposed to morally assess wars? Nobody could have seen it coming. He can think fast, he has his fingers on the pulse of America, he can’t be distracted from the real issues like Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural address from four months ago. Robert Barron is the strongest enemy we’ve ever faced, and unless we can discredit him and drive him away from Trump, we’ll never be able to end this war and finally defeat America.

TREVOR: [throwing his hands up] How is he still standing! We even infiltrated Disney and pulled up the release of season 2 of Andor! We know Barron cares about Star Wars, surely we seeded some ideas on resistance to fascism that way!

KIEFER: That one was actually my mistake, he never watched Andor, he assumes it’s woke because the lead actor is Mexican.

GARRETT: [heading back to his desk] So what’s left for us to do?

KIEFER: It’s time.

TREVOR: [heading back to his desk] Wait. Time for what?

KIEFER: The Epsilon Protocol.

TREVOR and GARRETT stiffen out of fear.

GARRETT: No!

TREVOR: That’s the most serious weapon we have as hackers!

KIEFER: [shouting] Do you think we have any other choice? Do you think that if there were any options left, we wouldn’t be trying them right now! It’s The Epsilon Protocol or nothing!

GARRETT: But- but that means…

KIEFER: Yes, Garrett. We’re going to log into Barron’s personal Facebook account, we’re going to like about half a dozen pages related to specific sexual proclivities, and then we’re never going to log back into his account or draw attention to the likes in any way, ever again.

TREVOR sinks into his seat. Both TREVOR and GARRETT are in a state of shock.

GARRETT: My God…

TREVOR: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

GARRETT: But there’s…there’s no coming back from that.

KIEFER: [snapping] Of course there’s no coming back from it! It’s The Epsilon Protocol!

TREVOR: Barron will say it’s hackers right away.

KIEFER: Oh, I expect him to. And when he does, everyone around him will go “uh, no, that’s not something any hacker would ever do? A hacker doesn’t log in as you, like a few Facebook pages about feet, and then log off. The hacked account didn’t spam anyone or try to impersonate Barron or really do any public-facing actions, that makes no sense at all, you clearly liked those pages yourself.” And that’s why The Epsilon Protocol is so brilliant. Because nobody will ever think to trace it back to us.

TREVOR: I know you said we had no other option, sir, but this…even for someone like Barron…

KIEFER: Especially for someone like Barron. The fact is that we target Bishop Barron precisely because he matters. The persistence and coordination of our efforts testify to his immense influence as a force for good, within the Catholic Church and far beyond it. In a cultural moment marked by cynicism, confusion, and moral drift, he remains an uncompromising witness to truth, reason, and human dignity. That moral clarity attracts millions, and, inevitably, provokes those hostile to it. And that’s why this team of Iranian hackers must stop him at any cost, even if it means implementing The Epsilon Protocol.

GARRETT: I can’t do it.

KIEFER: [snaps] What?

GARRETT: I can’t do it, it’s too dangerous! The Epsilon Protocol is too ruinous! Unleashing it now puts us in an entirely different world! I can’t let you do it!

KIEFER: Do it?

KIEFER steps towards GARRETT and lowers his voice.

KIEFER: Garrett, I’m not a DC Comics serial villain. Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it two and a half years ago.