(The Empty Quarter, Saudi Arabia, just North of 50'30 by 19'30, 4:30 in the PM)
Agent 3: Agent (REDACTED) reporting for shift change.
Agent 1: About !@#$ time. Where's your partner?
Agent 3: She's in the latrine. Something about lunch not agreeing with her.
Agent 2: She ate the shwarma, didn't she?
Agent 3: I think so. Why?
Agent 1: Never eat the !@#$ shwarma, man. Something about the pickled veggies kills most people's GI tracts worse than bug spray !@#$ up wasps. Stick with the kebabs, next time.
Agent 2: Shish, dude. Shish. Kebab is the lamb. Tawouk is the chicken. Shish is the cooking method. If he hears you talking like that he'll !@#$ cornhole you with both kinds until you got it straight.
Agent 3: He can't hear us, can he?
Agent 2: I ain't taking no !@#$ chances. What else does he have to listen to out there? Sidewinders !@#$ing?
Agent 1: So how long is he just going to hide out there, anyway?
Agent 2: Long as it takes. You know him.
Agent 3: Are you sure we're safe in here? I feel really !@#$ exposed...
Agent 2: Relax. This Holo-Ball we're in masks everything on this side. We could be having a crazy disco party with fifteen hookers and someone standing right outside wouldn't hear anything but the wind.
Agent 1: And wouldn't see anything but the sand unless he was wearing these lovely devo goggles we've got on to cut through the illusion. So this lovely piece of ordinance we're all straddling should come as a complete surprise.
Agent 3: You guys do this often, then?
Agent 1: All the !@#$ time. It's COMPANY policy. There's usually at least one off-site Holo-Ball at all major ops, just to contain the spillover. We don't get off more than a shot or two before we pack it up and RLF, but we're there.
Agent 3: RLF? I don't remember that from basic-
Agent 2: Run Like !@#$.
Agent 3: Ah. Okay. And what's the package on this one?
Agent 1: That's something special, man. (REDACTED), tell our friend about this wonderful thing.
Agent 2: Agent, you are looking at a cannon capable of firing Freeze Cans at a rate of ten per second. Anything they hit gets blasted to 300 below zero in less than two seconds, and stays that way for about ten minutes.
Agent 3: Woah... that's, like, holy !@#$.
Agent 1: That's one way to put it. It's standard ordinance for fire-based entities, like the !@#$ we're expecting, today. And when the !@#$ is he supposed to get here, man? I thought we were expecting him at noon?
Agent 2: You must have fallen asleep in the briefing, dude. We don't know when. The boss didn't specify a time. He just said today.
Agent 3: Okay, so what's the signals?
Agent 2: Didn't they tell you all this already, dude?
Agent 3: We got called in at last minute. I didn't even get a briefing.
Agent 1: !@#$ typical. Okay, if the boss raises his hands, blow the !@#$ away. If he raises them and twists them like this, don't, no matter what happens. Other than that, best judgment.
Agent 2: Especially when it comes to RLF. This !@#$ is a nasty one, by all accounts.
Agent 3: Yeah, now what is the deal with him? Do we have any intel whatsoever?
Agent 1: His name's Moloch. He resembles a minotaur made out of strips of brass. He grabs people, sticks them in his ribcage, and lights them on fire. And when they're on fire, he's on fire, and he breathes and throws fire at the slow-moving and unfortunate.
Agent 2: And he can teleport. Don't forget the mother!@#$ teleportation. This is how he's survived two rounds with our boss so far.
Agent 1: However, and this a big however, we have no files on him by way of the Legion. So either he's so new that he doesn't have a name for himself, or he doesn't actually work for them, which is pretty !@#$ strange.
Agent 3: Really?
Agent 2: Really. One thing you can count on the Legion being is !@#$ thorough when it comes to new supers. Their recruitment wing's pretty !@#$ hardcore. Lot of times they know someone's gonna put on a lousy costume and rob a bank before they even think to match colors and decide on a name.
Agent 1: Which kind of makes you wonder what's going on at the Skull.
Agent 2: That's their mobile headquarters. The Skull. It's never in the same place from day to day. Legion members get a teleportation device that lets it find them.
Agent 1: Yeah, kind of "don't call us, we'll call you." Only a little more sinister.
Agent 2: Yeah, dude. You really don't want to get called in to see them. It apparently means that you !@#$ up. Either that or they want to !@#$ you over.
Agent 1: Or !@#$ with you, man. I've heard some scary stories-
Agent 2: Oh man. Are you seeing this? He's here!
Agent 3: Oh my !@#$ God...
Agent 1: Jesus !@#$ Christ. That's... that's magnificent. Scary as !@#$, but still...
Agent 2: Okay, I am go for firing. Waiting for a signal. (REDACTED), you tell your partner to get her !@#$ off the can and in this ball right the !@#$ now or she's gonna miss the takedown of the century.
Agent 1: Boss is up. Repeat, boss is up. Weapon is hot. We are waiting for signal.
Agent 3: What's he doing? Are they talking?
Agent 2: I can lip read. I can't make out what the skell is saying but the boss is... wait, he's saying let her go. He's saying he'll do whatever the guy wants if he just lets her go.
Agent 1: Lets who go? What the-
Agent 3: Look. He's already on fire. He came with a victim this time. Who is it?
Agent 1: Oh my God. He's doing it. He's taking his weapons off. What the...?
Agent 3: There goes his pistol. Other pistol. Other other pistol.
Agent 2: Cryo grenades. He's tossing them behind him. Knives. That sword you can't see.
Agent 1: Oh man, he even took out the build-a-gun. He never gets rid of that.
Agent 2: Okay, hands are up, and he's giving the do not fire sign. I repeat, he's saying we do not fire. Standing by.
Agent 3: !@#$ this. I am getting (REDACTED) in here right the !@#$ now. We need all hands on deck.
Agent 1: What do we do, man? What do we !@#$ do?
Agent 2: We wait, dude. Chill. Boss man's got a plan. He always does.
Agent 1: Who the !@#$ is that in his chest? One of us?
Agent 2: Someone different, I think. It's a girl. Wreathed in flames and screaming. Can't tell who she is.
Agent 1: Oh man, the thing's breathing in. We gotta fire, man. If we don't fire the boss is dead.
Agent 2: If we do fire and he didn't want it, we're dead. Stay cool, dude. Stay cool.
Agent 4: Man, my !@#$ hurts like someone !@#$ it with a fire hydrant the wrong way. What's going on?
Agent 1: You're late to watch the boss get burned to a crisp, that's what!
Agent 2: I'm... oh man. He didn't even duck the fireball.
Agent 1: He didn't duck the second one, either.
Agent 2: Or the third. Oh man, I can't watch this. This is awful...
Agent 3: Is he down? Is he down?
Agent 1: Yeah... Yeah, he's down. He's on fire. He's not moving.
Agent 3: Well shoot the !@#$ thing, then! He can't discipline you if he's dead. Kill it!
Agent 2: You know... I hate to admit it, but she's got a point.
Agent 3: Well thank you. Shoot it!
Agent 1: I still say--
Agent 4: I say shoot the !@#$ thing and answer questions later, but that could just be my overactive !@#$ talking. Speaking of which, it's looking this way and I'd really like to get my !@#$ and me out of here.
Agent 1: If he comes back from the !@#$ dead I am not getting between his foot and your !@#$.
Agent 2: Firing Freeze Cans. God have mercy on us all.
(Firing Noises. Explosions. Screaming. Transmission ends.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Get Innocuous (LCD Soundsystem) and drinking what may be fire.)
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
9/23-24/11 - A Week Among the Dead and Dumb Pt. 2
Thursday: ENTIRELY !@#$ REDACTED.
You saw NOTHING. You heard NOTHING.
There was no strange light in the sky over Dallas, Texas. There was no debris. There was no strange presence in the city between the hours of 3:23 in the PM and 8:35 in the PM.
You did not receive strange television signals for products that do not exist, or get weird phone calls from things claiming to be old school friends. If you gave them your credit card numbers, or other personal details, have no fear, as these matters have been handled. Your momentary lapse of judgment in the face of the fantastic has been dealt with.
You're !@#$ welcome.
In other news, Neo York's finest weren't actually amused by the trash can lid shoot-out, but after a few drinks they did agree to pretend they didn't see it. Some actually joined in. The less said about these matters the better.
Friday: Morning rituals were sped up and truncated somewhat so as to get my stinking !@#$ on board the Flier super-!@#$-early. I have an appointment in Samara tomorrow, and I need to be ready for it.
Well, okay, not Samara. The Rub al Khali, actually. The Empty Quarter. The terrifyingly hot and empty expanse of desert right in the middle between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Yemen that no one really wants, but everybody has a little bit stuck to their sandals, since there's oil in them thar sand dunes.
I gave Moloch coordinates that will put him smack dab in the middle of it. I'm planning on beating him there by about twelve hours, hiding myself in the sand, and surprising his shiny metal !@#$. With any luck, I'll be able to knock him out before he gets off too many fireballs in my direction. And if the luck holds out, maybe I'll be able to interrogate his sorry !@#$.
Yes, Mr. President. Interrogate. As satisfying as it would be to just deep-six this thing like it deep-sixed the Black Rat of Armagh, I am about 101% certain that this thing is part of a complicated plan to assassinate yours truly. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed my completely understandable thirst for bloody vengeance to overwhelm my better judgment, and took away the opportunity to gain actionable intelligence from the scum!@#$ instead of just sending him to the great metal bin in the sky.
So this time I'm fighting smart. I got cryo-grenades. I got a freeze gun. I got all kinds of wet and cold ordinance to call on if I need it. He thinks he's gonna pull the BBQ treatment on me again, he's !@#$ nuts.
Now, just in case I don't make it out of this one in one piece, or without being so badly burned that you might as well stick my !@#$ in an oxygen tank for a few years, keep in mind the succession protocols. My second at The COMPANY is a nasty mean mother!@#$ who will do an excellent job in my stead. I've relied on him before, and I know he won't let us down.
As for other things, just as the issue of why you wanted me out of the Ice Palace, don't fret. He'll drop it. Unless, of course, you're dumb enough to push it once I'm done or incapacitated. If so, look out.
Saudi, here I come. Lock up your cute men.
(NOTE FROM POTUS: SPYGOD, on reflection, I don't think I really need to be this far into the loop. How about I just assume you're doing your job unless I hear otherwise, and we'll leave it at that. Good luck on Saturday. I know having a beer with this guy is not going to help.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Living on the Ceiling (Blancmange) and downing the black heroin)
You saw NOTHING. You heard NOTHING.
There was no strange light in the sky over Dallas, Texas. There was no debris. There was no strange presence in the city between the hours of 3:23 in the PM and 8:35 in the PM.
You did not receive strange television signals for products that do not exist, or get weird phone calls from things claiming to be old school friends. If you gave them your credit card numbers, or other personal details, have no fear, as these matters have been handled. Your momentary lapse of judgment in the face of the fantastic has been dealt with.
You're !@#$ welcome.
In other news, Neo York's finest weren't actually amused by the trash can lid shoot-out, but after a few drinks they did agree to pretend they didn't see it. Some actually joined in. The less said about these matters the better.
Friday: Morning rituals were sped up and truncated somewhat so as to get my stinking !@#$ on board the Flier super-!@#$-early. I have an appointment in Samara tomorrow, and I need to be ready for it.
Well, okay, not Samara. The Rub al Khali, actually. The Empty Quarter. The terrifyingly hot and empty expanse of desert right in the middle between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Oman, and Yemen that no one really wants, but everybody has a little bit stuck to their sandals, since there's oil in them thar sand dunes.
I gave Moloch coordinates that will put him smack dab in the middle of it. I'm planning on beating him there by about twelve hours, hiding myself in the sand, and surprising his shiny metal !@#$. With any luck, I'll be able to knock him out before he gets off too many fireballs in my direction. And if the luck holds out, maybe I'll be able to interrogate his sorry !@#$.
Yes, Mr. President. Interrogate. As satisfying as it would be to just deep-six this thing like it deep-sixed the Black Rat of Armagh, I am about 101% certain that this thing is part of a complicated plan to assassinate yours truly. I would be remiss in my duties if I allowed my completely understandable thirst for bloody vengeance to overwhelm my better judgment, and took away the opportunity to gain actionable intelligence from the scum!@#$ instead of just sending him to the great metal bin in the sky.
So this time I'm fighting smart. I got cryo-grenades. I got a freeze gun. I got all kinds of wet and cold ordinance to call on if I need it. He thinks he's gonna pull the BBQ treatment on me again, he's !@#$ nuts.
Now, just in case I don't make it out of this one in one piece, or without being so badly burned that you might as well stick my !@#$ in an oxygen tank for a few years, keep in mind the succession protocols. My second at The COMPANY is a nasty mean mother!@#$ who will do an excellent job in my stead. I've relied on him before, and I know he won't let us down.
As for other things, just as the issue of why you wanted me out of the Ice Palace, don't fret. He'll drop it. Unless, of course, you're dumb enough to push it once I'm done or incapacitated. If so, look out.
Saudi, here I come. Lock up your cute men.
(NOTE FROM POTUS: SPYGOD, on reflection, I don't think I really need to be this far into the loop. How about I just assume you're doing your job unless I hear otherwise, and we'll leave it at that. Good luck on Saturday. I know having a beer with this guy is not going to help.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Living on the Ceiling (Blancmange) and downing the black heroin)
Monday, September 26, 2011
9/20-22/11 - A Week Among the Dead and Dumb pt. 1
(As part of our current "understanding," the President would like to know what all I do on his time, and on his dime. I figured I've put this !@#$ off long enough. So, here's the straight story, or at least as straight as things get around yours truly.)
Tuesday:
Mostly alliterative morning ritual: Snore, Shoot alarm clock #s 1, 2 and 3, Snore, Shoot #4 and admit defeat, Shower, !@#$, Shave, Overdose, Tjbang Sticks, !@#$ last night's entertainment one last time before sending hir out the back elevator, Overdose, Tjbang Sticks, Suck down nough alcohol to numb my kidneys, Slide my hot !@#$ into the Flier.
Look into GORGON's possible whereabouts with our new recruit, the fake supervillian. It turns out he's explored very little of the subsurface world, which does me !@#$ all worth of good. However, he's more than willing to use our superior facilities to refit the Superdrill, which will make going after them a lot easier.
(It will also figure into my plan for dealing the deathblow to HONEYCOMB, but I don't tell him that because he doesn't need to know that, yet. Neither do you, come to think of it. Pretend your read nothing there, son.)
One piece of genuine excitement: I get an early morning phone call from DARPA, informing me that they have heard of the "unfortunate incident" with my beloved Aston Martin. Of course they're terribly sorry to hear, but would like to know if I'd like to "view this as an opportunity?"
"Why, what sort of opportunity would you be alluding to?" I ask, scrambling around my desk for something nasty and brain-destroying to shoot down over the phone lines.
It just so transpires that they're about to release the photos for their flying battlefield car, aptly named "The Transformer." It will combine the ruggedness of a humvee with the lift of a twin-rotor helicopter, allowing the best of both words when it comes to handling the road and then rising above it to avoid rubble, IEDs, and camels that just will not get out of the !@#$ road.
So I play along, and look at the work that Lockheed's done, and try not to vomit down the line. And then I explain to the person on the other end why I wouldn't really be interested in giving this abomination any face time (or !@#$ time, really, since I'd just be sitting in it).
I give him about a dozen problems, but the real issue is that it's ugly as happy unholy !@#$. It looks like someone took the Batmobile from the new movies and made it have rough and nasty machine-sex with a bargain basement VTOL. And then he wiped his cam shaft off on her bedposts when he was done.
I want something I can look good in while I trundle down to the Bangkok Eight and try to score in the other other meat market. This would make me look like some paranoid urban vigilante with a daddy complex and no sense of !@#$ style.
And I can tell you from second-hand experience, one does not score while driving such a beast. One gets laughed at and then chased away by the strange, butterfly-like entity that patrols that meat market and keeps the katooeys safe from harm. And you do not want that nasty !@#$ on your !@#$ in any way, shape, or form.
I think the phone guy is a little put out, but he's more than receptive to my counter offer. I tell him I'll give him five billion dollars if they come up with a reasonable alternative to my melted car. Preferably something with excellent gas mileage, superior handling, and the same crazy !@#$ weaponry options I had from before, only this time with spinning wheels.
(How's that for creating jobs, Mr. President?)
Oh, yeah, and I do some more super spy stuff. Mostly just check in with my contacts from the other Company about the intel I'd given them. It is apparently being well used by our friends in Libya, which means that the Colonel's chicken is gonna be !@#$ deep fried any day now. Really.
(Put that in a speech, why don't you...)
The rest of the evening is !@#$ redacted in the name of not turning any more of your hairs white as snow. It involves at least three katooeys and enough exotic, extraterrestrial marital aids to keep the flying saucer nuts' heads spinning for years. Sometimes I leak photos onto the internet just for laughs, because I am an evil man. Really.
Wednesday:
Previous night's debauchery makes the morning ritual a little edgy. I might have actually taken the tjbang sticks before the overdose, which makes the morning meeting much more surreal than usual. I think I actually succeed in shooting out the conference room ceiling, but that may be because, after years of shooting the occasional bullet into the light fixture, the poor !@#$ thing finally gave up the ghost. RIP 1.5 Million Dollar Light Fixture. Cost to replace: 2.4 Million.
(Which reminds me. We are having some problems maintaining The COMPANY's fleet. The Flier is old and sagging, the drones are starting to rot, and our remaining subs need a serious refit. I think we need another couple decimal points on the Black Budget this year, sir.)
Amongst the things we were discussing: the plans to deal with HONEYCOMB. You don't need to know all the details. Just know that it's coming real !@#$ soon. There's one last piece of "!@#$ you" I intend to perpetrate on them just before the end, but it's been in the works for some time now, and all I have to do is sit back and light the fuse. Watch for the boom, Mr. President.
Speaking of boom, I got 48 hours, and then me and Moloch are going for round three. I've got a plan. !@#$, I've got ten plans. But this is going to be interesting, no matter what.
"Interesting" being code talk for "I wonder if I'm getting out of this one or not."
The rest of the day paled in comparison. I treated my morning staff for some decent pizza and brews at an out of the way place I know in the city, and we took turns throwing trash can lids into the air and shooting them out of the sky over the back porch. You never know when we're going to be invaded by flying trash can lids, so we called it a preparedness exercise when Neo York City's finest showed up.
I think they bought it.
(SPYGOD is listening to Its My Life (Talk Talk) and having a Magic Hat Hex Ourtoberfest)
Tuesday:
Mostly alliterative morning ritual: Snore, Shoot alarm clock #s 1, 2 and 3, Snore, Shoot #4 and admit defeat, Shower, !@#$, Shave, Overdose, Tjbang Sticks, !@#$ last night's entertainment one last time before sending hir out the back elevator, Overdose, Tjbang Sticks, Suck down nough alcohol to numb my kidneys, Slide my hot !@#$ into the Flier.
Look into GORGON's possible whereabouts with our new recruit, the fake supervillian. It turns out he's explored very little of the subsurface world, which does me !@#$ all worth of good. However, he's more than willing to use our superior facilities to refit the Superdrill, which will make going after them a lot easier.
(It will also figure into my plan for dealing the deathblow to HONEYCOMB, but I don't tell him that because he doesn't need to know that, yet. Neither do you, come to think of it. Pretend your read nothing there, son.)
One piece of genuine excitement: I get an early morning phone call from DARPA, informing me that they have heard of the "unfortunate incident" with my beloved Aston Martin. Of course they're terribly sorry to hear, but would like to know if I'd like to "view this as an opportunity?"
"Why, what sort of opportunity would you be alluding to?" I ask, scrambling around my desk for something nasty and brain-destroying to shoot down over the phone lines.
It just so transpires that they're about to release the photos for their flying battlefield car, aptly named "The Transformer." It will combine the ruggedness of a humvee with the lift of a twin-rotor helicopter, allowing the best of both words when it comes to handling the road and then rising above it to avoid rubble, IEDs, and camels that just will not get out of the !@#$ road.
So I play along, and look at the work that Lockheed's done, and try not to vomit down the line. And then I explain to the person on the other end why I wouldn't really be interested in giving this abomination any face time (or !@#$ time, really, since I'd just be sitting in it).
I give him about a dozen problems, but the real issue is that it's ugly as happy unholy !@#$. It looks like someone took the Batmobile from the new movies and made it have rough and nasty machine-sex with a bargain basement VTOL. And then he wiped his cam shaft off on her bedposts when he was done.
I want something I can look good in while I trundle down to the Bangkok Eight and try to score in the other other meat market. This would make me look like some paranoid urban vigilante with a daddy complex and no sense of !@#$ style.
And I can tell you from second-hand experience, one does not score while driving such a beast. One gets laughed at and then chased away by the strange, butterfly-like entity that patrols that meat market and keeps the katooeys safe from harm. And you do not want that nasty !@#$ on your !@#$ in any way, shape, or form.
I think the phone guy is a little put out, but he's more than receptive to my counter offer. I tell him I'll give him five billion dollars if they come up with a reasonable alternative to my melted car. Preferably something with excellent gas mileage, superior handling, and the same crazy !@#$ weaponry options I had from before, only this time with spinning wheels.
(How's that for creating jobs, Mr. President?)
Oh, yeah, and I do some more super spy stuff. Mostly just check in with my contacts from the other Company about the intel I'd given them. It is apparently being well used by our friends in Libya, which means that the Colonel's chicken is gonna be !@#$ deep fried any day now. Really.
(Put that in a speech, why don't you...)
The rest of the evening is !@#$ redacted in the name of not turning any more of your hairs white as snow. It involves at least three katooeys and enough exotic, extraterrestrial marital aids to keep the flying saucer nuts' heads spinning for years. Sometimes I leak photos onto the internet just for laughs, because I am an evil man. Really.
Wednesday:
Previous night's debauchery makes the morning ritual a little edgy. I might have actually taken the tjbang sticks before the overdose, which makes the morning meeting much more surreal than usual. I think I actually succeed in shooting out the conference room ceiling, but that may be because, after years of shooting the occasional bullet into the light fixture, the poor !@#$ thing finally gave up the ghost. RIP 1.5 Million Dollar Light Fixture. Cost to replace: 2.4 Million.
(Which reminds me. We are having some problems maintaining The COMPANY's fleet. The Flier is old and sagging, the drones are starting to rot, and our remaining subs need a serious refit. I think we need another couple decimal points on the Black Budget this year, sir.)
Amongst the things we were discussing: the plans to deal with HONEYCOMB. You don't need to know all the details. Just know that it's coming real !@#$ soon. There's one last piece of "!@#$ you" I intend to perpetrate on them just before the end, but it's been in the works for some time now, and all I have to do is sit back and light the fuse. Watch for the boom, Mr. President.
Speaking of boom, I got 48 hours, and then me and Moloch are going for round three. I've got a plan. !@#$, I've got ten plans. But this is going to be interesting, no matter what.
"Interesting" being code talk for "I wonder if I'm getting out of this one or not."
The rest of the day paled in comparison. I treated my morning staff for some decent pizza and brews at an out of the way place I know in the city, and we took turns throwing trash can lids into the air and shooting them out of the sky over the back porch. You never know when we're going to be invaded by flying trash can lids, so we called it a preparedness exercise when Neo York City's finest showed up.
I think they bought it.
(SPYGOD is listening to Its My Life (Talk Talk) and having a Magic Hat Hex Ourtoberfest)
Thursday, September 22, 2011
9/19/11 - Denying Beethoven His Music
I have never, ever liked hospital waiting rooms. I've never liked waiting in them, I certainly have never liked waiting for service in them, !@#$ I don't even like walking past one. They remind me of things I'd really rather forget, and even if they're clean as a whistle as well-kept as a Senator's "special play friend," there's always that underlying stain of sadness, worry, despair, and pain.
(And they always have the television on some !@#$ awful channel with shows and ads that you do not need to be watching when you're writhing in pain. Always.)
So you have to understand that it takes a great and mighty reason for SPYGOD to be cooling his hot pink heels in one, son. And, no, it wasn't anything those five new kids did to me yesterday in a futile but well-tried attempt to get a free day (they came close, though). It's something a lot better, in some ways, though it reminds me of something really !@#$ sad at the same time.
Here's the story. Just this morning, some little kid went doddering out into traffic. Mom was talking on her !@#$ cell phone and didn't see a god!@#$ thing. And along comes a humvee, going a little too fast for that neighborhood at that time of morning.
Fortunately, an older girl on her way to school saw the toddler heading for what was going to be a one-way ticket to squish city, and ran out to try and stop the tragedy. She succeeded in knocking the baby out of the way, but got hit by the humvee, and thrown about twenty feet down the street.
I know, that sounds awful. It's even worse when you consider the mom's planning on suing the girl because her toddler got bad bump on the head. (Why don't we require parenting licenses? Is that too liberal of me?)
But here's the thing. The older girl is fine.
Okay, she's really tired and sleeping off the experience, which is a nice way of saying she's floating in and out of what could be a coma, and is in the hospital for observation. But she should be in really bad shape. She should be suffering from broken bones, crush injuries, burst organs, probably a concussion too the way her head hit the pavement.
But there isn't a !@#$ scratch on her. And the humvee looks like it ran into a concrete wall.
The COMPANY has people working around the clock, keeping an ear open for emergency coms chatter that match certain parameters. This case hit all the flags. And when we looked into the kid's past, we found out that her life's been more than a little interesting, lately: stories of accidents at school that should have sent her to the nurse's, if not the hospital, but that she just shrugged off.
Now, you might be thinking "Aw, cool, SPYGOD! She's got powers! This is a good thing, right?"
And yes, it is. But at the same time it isn't. And, one step below (or above) all that, there's something else lurking behind the curtain that I don't like peeking at.
I'm sure you've heard old farts like me talk about the War, and the time before the War, when there were heroes and villains and costumes and powers. Around the late 20's the metahuman population in the civilized world increased by a factor of ten, and it increased by that same amount by the time the War rolled around. And while a lot of powered people got killed in the fighting, or the homefronts, there were still more than enough to breed, as well as people just developing powers through freak accidents, weird science, or some quirk of the genes, right?
You'd think so. And you'd be right. And if the rate of increase had remained steady, we'd probably be up to our !@#$ eyeballs in Supers, right now.
So, why aren't we experiencing a metahuman renaissance, then? Why are the only supers coming out of first world nations, these days? Why aren't the skies just full of flying men and women, and the cities patrolled by squads of capes?
Because we're !@#$ chicken!@#$, son. That's the short answer.
The War showed us what could happen when nations weaponized metahuman talents. It was !@#$ scary, too. Ask anyone on the Russian front when the Third Reich's ubermenschen went stomping towards Stalingrad, or folks in London when some of the bombing raids were carried out by fliers. Ask the Chinese and other Asian and Pacific nations who had to bear the brunt of pre-war Japanese colonialism.
(And be sure to ask the folks in Berlin and Tokyo when us, the Brits, and the Soviets got a superior response together and returned the favor.)
After the War was over, we went on like we didn't learn a !@#$ thing. We discovered horrible things in Germany, Japan, and China, but just wound up grabbing the scientists responsible and putting them to work, just like we did for the nuclear physicists and aeronautical engineers. The Soviets did the same !@#$ thing, and there we were, playing dueling Strategic Talents across the oceans.
Then came Korea. Then came the question as to whether we put supers into the conflict. Then came the moment when both sides realized that, if they didn't, the other side would. And things went !@#$ downhill from there, let me tell you.
After the Armistice, the Security Council of the United Nations had a few secret meetings regarding the Strategic Talents problem. The fact was that, much like nukes, the genie was out of the !@#$ bottle and wasn't going back in. But something had to be done, clearly. It would only take a few rogue elements in a regime to set some really powerful folks loose, and then someone else would pay the price, and retaliate in kind.
(Yes, this should sound eerily familiar. We had the post-Computer Hell Virus WMD talk behind closed doors in the 50's. You're welcome.)
The dialogue in that room was horrible, but candid and realistic. At the time I didn't have the clout I do now, so most of the time I just spoke when spoken to and kept my !@#$ mouth shut the rest of the time. But I'm sure they could read my thoughts on my face when they talked about forced sterilization programs, camps., mandatory screenings, and the like.
That was me they were !@#$ talking about. Sure, I'd volunteered to become a strategic talent, but if I ever had kids (yeah, yeah, never say never) then they'd be condemned because of my decision. And what about all the people who just woke up one morning and learned they could fly?
Finally, someone shut them the !@#$ up. I can't tell you who, as that's still classified, but he was one of the people who'd been to Auschwitz just after it was liberated. And he took every single one of those smug, detached !@#$ apart by explaining that there was a word for their attitude, and we'd lost a lot of good people fighting a war against it not more than twenty years before.
I could have kissed him. (Okay, I did, but that was another time and another story)
So we came up with another solution. It wasn't great, but it beat the others. It involved using certain secret scientific techniques and concocting a few formulas. It also involved putting suspicious additives into the water, and tainting certain medicinal supplies that the UN had a hand in passing around in less fortunate countries.
That's why the world isn't full of superheroes, son. Because almost everyone drinks the water out the tap. And if they don't, then they're probably getting some kind of medicine or food supplies from a UN hunger relief program.
And once you've got that gunk in you, turning off the parts of your genome that would turn you into a super under certain conditions, or make your kids more likely to have powers, then you're as good as neutralized.
Of course, the gunk can't fix everything. Some people slip through. Some people are just !@#$ immune. And there's always the possibility that, over time, the stuff's losing its efficacy, as humanity's evolved a little further down the pipe from where we were in the late 50's.
And on those days, when we get a story like the one that's got me sitting in this waiting room, I feel a lot better about myself. I tell myself that we just needed a cooling off period. We just needed to get away from the shadow of ABWEHR and Unit 731 and all the horrible things we all did to try and get ahead of each other.
But I wonder what we've lost, too. Out there could be some superbrain kid who might have woken up one day and figured out a cure for cancer, or a way to power the world using two tin cans and a rock. There could have been someone who saw a tragedy like the Computer Hell Virus occur and stopped it.
There could have been so much good amongst the bad, maybe even more of it. But we were scared and smug and stupid, and told ourselves it was better to deny the positives out of fear of the negatives.
How many Beethovens did we deny the joy of music to just to avoid one or two Florence Foster Jenkins? I may never know. I don't think I want to.
But I do know one thing. Sleeping in a room down the hall is a young lady who just found out that she's special, and she has no !@#$ idea just how special special is. So I am going to go down there once she's awake, and give her the same talk I give to everyone else who slips past the gunk. She may not like to hear it, but it'll be what she needs to know.
And no, you don't get to listen in, son. Some things are still !@#$ private. This is one of them.
For now.
(SPYGOD is listening to X-Ray Vision (Moon Martin) and avoiding the tap water)
(And they always have the television on some !@#$ awful channel with shows and ads that you do not need to be watching when you're writhing in pain. Always.)
So you have to understand that it takes a great and mighty reason for SPYGOD to be cooling his hot pink heels in one, son. And, no, it wasn't anything those five new kids did to me yesterday in a futile but well-tried attempt to get a free day (they came close, though). It's something a lot better, in some ways, though it reminds me of something really !@#$ sad at the same time.
Here's the story. Just this morning, some little kid went doddering out into traffic. Mom was talking on her !@#$ cell phone and didn't see a god!@#$ thing. And along comes a humvee, going a little too fast for that neighborhood at that time of morning.
Fortunately, an older girl on her way to school saw the toddler heading for what was going to be a one-way ticket to squish city, and ran out to try and stop the tragedy. She succeeded in knocking the baby out of the way, but got hit by the humvee, and thrown about twenty feet down the street.
I know, that sounds awful. It's even worse when you consider the mom's planning on suing the girl because her toddler got bad bump on the head. (Why don't we require parenting licenses? Is that too liberal of me?)
But here's the thing. The older girl is fine.
Okay, she's really tired and sleeping off the experience, which is a nice way of saying she's floating in and out of what could be a coma, and is in the hospital for observation. But she should be in really bad shape. She should be suffering from broken bones, crush injuries, burst organs, probably a concussion too the way her head hit the pavement.
But there isn't a !@#$ scratch on her. And the humvee looks like it ran into a concrete wall.
The COMPANY has people working around the clock, keeping an ear open for emergency coms chatter that match certain parameters. This case hit all the flags. And when we looked into the kid's past, we found out that her life's been more than a little interesting, lately: stories of accidents at school that should have sent her to the nurse's, if not the hospital, but that she just shrugged off.
Now, you might be thinking "Aw, cool, SPYGOD! She's got powers! This is a good thing, right?"
And yes, it is. But at the same time it isn't. And, one step below (or above) all that, there's something else lurking behind the curtain that I don't like peeking at.
I'm sure you've heard old farts like me talk about the War, and the time before the War, when there were heroes and villains and costumes and powers. Around the late 20's the metahuman population in the civilized world increased by a factor of ten, and it increased by that same amount by the time the War rolled around. And while a lot of powered people got killed in the fighting, or the homefronts, there were still more than enough to breed, as well as people just developing powers through freak accidents, weird science, or some quirk of the genes, right?
You'd think so. And you'd be right. And if the rate of increase had remained steady, we'd probably be up to our !@#$ eyeballs in Supers, right now.
So, why aren't we experiencing a metahuman renaissance, then? Why are the only supers coming out of first world nations, these days? Why aren't the skies just full of flying men and women, and the cities patrolled by squads of capes?
Because we're !@#$ chicken!@#$, son. That's the short answer.
The War showed us what could happen when nations weaponized metahuman talents. It was !@#$ scary, too. Ask anyone on the Russian front when the Third Reich's ubermenschen went stomping towards Stalingrad, or folks in London when some of the bombing raids were carried out by fliers. Ask the Chinese and other Asian and Pacific nations who had to bear the brunt of pre-war Japanese colonialism.
(And be sure to ask the folks in Berlin and Tokyo when us, the Brits, and the Soviets got a superior response together and returned the favor.)
After the War was over, we went on like we didn't learn a !@#$ thing. We discovered horrible things in Germany, Japan, and China, but just wound up grabbing the scientists responsible and putting them to work, just like we did for the nuclear physicists and aeronautical engineers. The Soviets did the same !@#$ thing, and there we were, playing dueling Strategic Talents across the oceans.
Then came Korea. Then came the question as to whether we put supers into the conflict. Then came the moment when both sides realized that, if they didn't, the other side would. And things went !@#$ downhill from there, let me tell you.
After the Armistice, the Security Council of the United Nations had a few secret meetings regarding the Strategic Talents problem. The fact was that, much like nukes, the genie was out of the !@#$ bottle and wasn't going back in. But something had to be done, clearly. It would only take a few rogue elements in a regime to set some really powerful folks loose, and then someone else would pay the price, and retaliate in kind.
(Yes, this should sound eerily familiar. We had the post-Computer Hell Virus WMD talk behind closed doors in the 50's. You're welcome.)
The dialogue in that room was horrible, but candid and realistic. At the time I didn't have the clout I do now, so most of the time I just spoke when spoken to and kept my !@#$ mouth shut the rest of the time. But I'm sure they could read my thoughts on my face when they talked about forced sterilization programs, camps., mandatory screenings, and the like.
That was me they were !@#$ talking about. Sure, I'd volunteered to become a strategic talent, but if I ever had kids (yeah, yeah, never say never) then they'd be condemned because of my decision. And what about all the people who just woke up one morning and learned they could fly?
Finally, someone shut them the !@#$ up. I can't tell you who, as that's still classified, but he was one of the people who'd been to Auschwitz just after it was liberated. And he took every single one of those smug, detached !@#$ apart by explaining that there was a word for their attitude, and we'd lost a lot of good people fighting a war against it not more than twenty years before.
I could have kissed him. (Okay, I did, but that was another time and another story)
So we came up with another solution. It wasn't great, but it beat the others. It involved using certain secret scientific techniques and concocting a few formulas. It also involved putting suspicious additives into the water, and tainting certain medicinal supplies that the UN had a hand in passing around in less fortunate countries.
That's why the world isn't full of superheroes, son. Because almost everyone drinks the water out the tap. And if they don't, then they're probably getting some kind of medicine or food supplies from a UN hunger relief program.
And once you've got that gunk in you, turning off the parts of your genome that would turn you into a super under certain conditions, or make your kids more likely to have powers, then you're as good as neutralized.
Of course, the gunk can't fix everything. Some people slip through. Some people are just !@#$ immune. And there's always the possibility that, over time, the stuff's losing its efficacy, as humanity's evolved a little further down the pipe from where we were in the late 50's.
And on those days, when we get a story like the one that's got me sitting in this waiting room, I feel a lot better about myself. I tell myself that we just needed a cooling off period. We just needed to get away from the shadow of ABWEHR and Unit 731 and all the horrible things we all did to try and get ahead of each other.
But I wonder what we've lost, too. Out there could be some superbrain kid who might have woken up one day and figured out a cure for cancer, or a way to power the world using two tin cans and a rock. There could have been someone who saw a tragedy like the Computer Hell Virus occur and stopped it.
There could have been so much good amongst the bad, maybe even more of it. But we were scared and smug and stupid, and told ourselves it was better to deny the positives out of fear of the negatives.
How many Beethovens did we deny the joy of music to just to avoid one or two Florence Foster Jenkins? I may never know. I don't think I want to.
But I do know one thing. Sleeping in a room down the hall is a young lady who just found out that she's special, and she has no !@#$ idea just how special special is. So I am going to go down there once she's awake, and give her the same talk I give to everyone else who slips past the gunk. She may not like to hear it, but it'll be what she needs to know.
And no, you don't get to listen in, son. Some things are still !@#$ private. This is one of them.
For now.
(SPYGOD is listening to X-Ray Vision (Moon Martin) and avoiding the tap water)
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
9/18/11 - Training Day
Bright and early Sunday morning. Sun's over the horizon, mist's boiling off of Foggy Bottom, and someone just shot the rooster in the !@#$ face.
Most other people are asleep, cursing their lot, or finding an excuse to avoid going to Church. But here at the Heptagon, we're starting the work week out with a mother!@#$ bang. Mostly because we don't have time for weekends with all the big bites we're trying to chew right now. But also because, if I don't get a weekend, then none of my Agents do, either.
First order of the day was to spend a couple hours with "Underman," today, in the hopes of getting him up to speed on how we do things in The COMPANY. A couple days of decent food and a bed that doesn't shock his fat !@#$ at random intervals has done wonders for his concentration, but he still doesn't seem to be getting it just yet.
It's not that I doubt that he wants to go straight (excuse the phrase). It's just that he's still too much of a licked dog to be of any real use in the field right now. There's too many weird pauses and moments when I can see he's wondering what he should say to avoid being smacked upside the head yet again.
This has the effect of making those moments when I do smack him upside the head less than satisfying, much less instructive. And, !@#$ it, I need people who can make decisions in a split second, and not worry about being smacked upside the head, or shot at, by yours truly, until the moment comes when I stick my gun up their nose.
"Act first, think later, explain yourself if you live" being what we tell people. That and "Learn to duck and when to !@#$," which is a little more complicated.
So, after some really embarrassing blubber-boy moments in which I thought he was going to flood the room with his tears, I realized that I was the problem. My presence, specifically, which led me to decide that it would be better if I just sat this one out. And, sure enough, once I went from active participation to mere observation, he stopped being a scared little boy trapped in a man's body and actually started showing some semblance of a backbone.
Which was !@#$ good, because the next class was everyone's favorite: "Grenades, Bombs, and Things That Go BOOM." And you do not want to be !@#$ing your pants in that one.
(Not until it's right and proper to be doing so, of course)
Instead, I had a few drinks over an habanero frittata with some of my veterans, as it was well past lunchtime by then, and went on down to the firing range to check out the latest group to make it through the grueling marathon that is Hell Month. I got five survivors this time, which is about right. We find that, if you take thirty wannabees and throw them into the chomping jaws of perdition, the dead weight and useless folks get shed off early, and the few who survive have become a cohesive unit.
A family, in other words. Brothers and sisters. Maybe a den mom or big daddy, too, depending on the dynamic, which is fine as everyone remembers I'm the daddy with the biggest !@#$ they're ever gonna meet.
Times like this, watching a new group come up and get this close to making it, I get a little wistful. I think about those of us who survived Camp Rogers, and then survived the War in Europe, or the Pacific. I think about the first few groups of recruits we brought in to make The COMPANY, after Korea, and how the ones who made it through the wringer became small knots of family and friends.
I think about how few of all those original groups are left, and get a little more wistful, so I stop that !@#$ cold by throwing a little extra fun into one of their final exercises. I take a fistful of tjbang sticks, walk down into the pit, and offer them the day off if they can knock my gay !@#$ down for a full minute without using any weapons.
Something about the way they look at me in almost unison, smile, and get to work makes me a happy man indeed.
(SPYGOD is listening to Right Here, Right Now (Fatboy Slim) and eating trainee fist)
Most other people are asleep, cursing their lot, or finding an excuse to avoid going to Church. But here at the Heptagon, we're starting the work week out with a mother!@#$ bang. Mostly because we don't have time for weekends with all the big bites we're trying to chew right now. But also because, if I don't get a weekend, then none of my Agents do, either.
First order of the day was to spend a couple hours with "Underman," today, in the hopes of getting him up to speed on how we do things in The COMPANY. A couple days of decent food and a bed that doesn't shock his fat !@#$ at random intervals has done wonders for his concentration, but he still doesn't seem to be getting it just yet.
It's not that I doubt that he wants to go straight (excuse the phrase). It's just that he's still too much of a licked dog to be of any real use in the field right now. There's too many weird pauses and moments when I can see he's wondering what he should say to avoid being smacked upside the head yet again.
This has the effect of making those moments when I do smack him upside the head less than satisfying, much less instructive. And, !@#$ it, I need people who can make decisions in a split second, and not worry about being smacked upside the head, or shot at, by yours truly, until the moment comes when I stick my gun up their nose.
"Act first, think later, explain yourself if you live" being what we tell people. That and "Learn to duck and when to !@#$," which is a little more complicated.
So, after some really embarrassing blubber-boy moments in which I thought he was going to flood the room with his tears, I realized that I was the problem. My presence, specifically, which led me to decide that it would be better if I just sat this one out. And, sure enough, once I went from active participation to mere observation, he stopped being a scared little boy trapped in a man's body and actually started showing some semblance of a backbone.
Which was !@#$ good, because the next class was everyone's favorite: "Grenades, Bombs, and Things That Go BOOM." And you do not want to be !@#$ing your pants in that one.
(Not until it's right and proper to be doing so, of course)
Instead, I had a few drinks over an habanero frittata with some of my veterans, as it was well past lunchtime by then, and went on down to the firing range to check out the latest group to make it through the grueling marathon that is Hell Month. I got five survivors this time, which is about right. We find that, if you take thirty wannabees and throw them into the chomping jaws of perdition, the dead weight and useless folks get shed off early, and the few who survive have become a cohesive unit.
A family, in other words. Brothers and sisters. Maybe a den mom or big daddy, too, depending on the dynamic, which is fine as everyone remembers I'm the daddy with the biggest !@#$ they're ever gonna meet.
Times like this, watching a new group come up and get this close to making it, I get a little wistful. I think about those of us who survived Camp Rogers, and then survived the War in Europe, or the Pacific. I think about the first few groups of recruits we brought in to make The COMPANY, after Korea, and how the ones who made it through the wringer became small knots of family and friends.
I think about how few of all those original groups are left, and get a little more wistful, so I stop that !@#$ cold by throwing a little extra fun into one of their final exercises. I take a fistful of tjbang sticks, walk down into the pit, and offer them the day off if they can knock my gay !@#$ down for a full minute without using any weapons.
Something about the way they look at me in almost unison, smile, and get to work makes me a happy man indeed.
(SPYGOD is listening to Right Here, Right Now (Fatboy Slim) and eating trainee fist)
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
9/17/11 - SPYGOD LETTER - LTTE RE "Historic Bar Destroyed in Supers Fight"
Dear Editor
I read with interest the article "Historic Bar Destroyed in Supers Fight" (9/16/11). Seeing as how I was one of the two "Supers" involved in the incident, I would like to clear up some misconceptions and shortcomings from that article.
The introductory paragraph is mostly correct, though you had one really bad !@#$ mistake. The Black Rat of Armagh was founded in 1945, when its founder was Section Eighted out of the armed services. 1952 was simply the year that that same man was found guilty of a gruesome and sickening murder on the premises.
The business then fell to his eldest son, who purportedly saw no reason to rehabilitate the business. The echoes of that horrible deed went on give the establishment a unique color for the remaining 59 years of its existence. 59 years that ended far too soon, the other night.
Right here is about where your !@#$ article falls apart like the cheap suits your sorry-!@#$ reporters tend to wear to press conferences.
First off, bartender Charles "Dog!@#$" McKenzie was not killed during the fight. He was as good as dead probably ten minutes before it started, as that nasty metal !@#$ Moloch picked him up, put him inside his brass ribcage, and ignited him.
Secondly, he wasn't 48. He was actually 55 but constantly lied about his age to attempt to pick up women, unsuccessfully I might add. SPYGOD knows all.
Thirdly, we didn't blow up the building while we were fighting. He caught it on fire with his first shot at me, and, after I ducked and jumped through a window, he crashed after me. Then we started to actually fight while it burned down behind us.
I wish your pencil-necked geek !@#$ of a reporter could have seen that fight, too. The monster had it coming since the last time I saw him, and this time I was prepared. Oh was I ever.
And I know you're reading this, you brass !@#$. Did you like those liquid nitrogen bombs I shoved up your !@#$ when you thought you were going to stomp me flat? I bet you did. You screamed like a greenhorn at a late 70's backroom !@#$-buster contest, and oh was I so happy to hear it.
Your reporter was correct that he teleported away. He did not catch my meaning when I said "again," though. This Moloch is clearly a coward who thinks he can sneak up on me when I'm trying to have a civilized drink in an uncivilized place, and then runs when he finds out this cat's got claws.
You and me, !@#$stick. One week from when they print this letter. 50'30 by 19'30. You weasel out of it and I will hound you from one side of the planet to the other, and no one will dare hide you for fear of what I'll do to them.
One more note: it is true that many of the neighborhoods the Black Rat squatted in over those 59 years were dragged down by its presence, and many who lived in those places were not at all unhappy to see it go. But I say !@#$ them. For almost 60 years, the NYPD has known exactly where to go to roust the sleaziest of scofflaws and ne'er-do-wells. Consider it to have been a strange kind of public service; flypaper for the criminal element, as it were.
It was sleazy and grungy. The lights burned out one by one and were never replaced, the tables had so many stains they looked like a Warhol-inspired art project, and the men's bathroom was worse than the POW camp the North Koreans threw me in that one time. But you knew what you were getting the moment you stepped in and smelled the air, and some of us actually liked it that way. You could drink in complete peace, knowing that no one would dare disturb you.
For someone like myself, that was heaven, and we lost a slice of it the other night.
Yours
SPYGOD
ps: "I read with interest" is just shorthand for "Get your !@#$ facts straight, you worthless !@#$ hack."
(SPYGOD is listening to Sunday Papers (Joe Jackson) and drinking something really !@#$ cold)
I read with interest the article "Historic Bar Destroyed in Supers Fight" (9/16/11). Seeing as how I was one of the two "Supers" involved in the incident, I would like to clear up some misconceptions and shortcomings from that article.
The introductory paragraph is mostly correct, though you had one really bad !@#$ mistake. The Black Rat of Armagh was founded in 1945, when its founder was Section Eighted out of the armed services. 1952 was simply the year that that same man was found guilty of a gruesome and sickening murder on the premises.
The business then fell to his eldest son, who purportedly saw no reason to rehabilitate the business. The echoes of that horrible deed went on give the establishment a unique color for the remaining 59 years of its existence. 59 years that ended far too soon, the other night.
Right here is about where your !@#$ article falls apart like the cheap suits your sorry-!@#$ reporters tend to wear to press conferences.
First off, bartender Charles "Dog!@#$" McKenzie was not killed during the fight. He was as good as dead probably ten minutes before it started, as that nasty metal !@#$ Moloch picked him up, put him inside his brass ribcage, and ignited him.
Secondly, he wasn't 48. He was actually 55 but constantly lied about his age to attempt to pick up women, unsuccessfully I might add. SPYGOD knows all.
Thirdly, we didn't blow up the building while we were fighting. He caught it on fire with his first shot at me, and, after I ducked and jumped through a window, he crashed after me. Then we started to actually fight while it burned down behind us.
I wish your pencil-necked geek !@#$ of a reporter could have seen that fight, too. The monster had it coming since the last time I saw him, and this time I was prepared. Oh was I ever.
And I know you're reading this, you brass !@#$. Did you like those liquid nitrogen bombs I shoved up your !@#$ when you thought you were going to stomp me flat? I bet you did. You screamed like a greenhorn at a late 70's backroom !@#$-buster contest, and oh was I so happy to hear it.
Your reporter was correct that he teleported away. He did not catch my meaning when I said "again," though. This Moloch is clearly a coward who thinks he can sneak up on me when I'm trying to have a civilized drink in an uncivilized place, and then runs when he finds out this cat's got claws.
You and me, !@#$stick. One week from when they print this letter. 50'30 by 19'30. You weasel out of it and I will hound you from one side of the planet to the other, and no one will dare hide you for fear of what I'll do to them.
One more note: it is true that many of the neighborhoods the Black Rat squatted in over those 59 years were dragged down by its presence, and many who lived in those places were not at all unhappy to see it go. But I say !@#$ them. For almost 60 years, the NYPD has known exactly where to go to roust the sleaziest of scofflaws and ne'er-do-wells. Consider it to have been a strange kind of public service; flypaper for the criminal element, as it were.
It was sleazy and grungy. The lights burned out one by one and were never replaced, the tables had so many stains they looked like a Warhol-inspired art project, and the men's bathroom was worse than the POW camp the North Koreans threw me in that one time. But you knew what you were getting the moment you stepped in and smelled the air, and some of us actually liked it that way. You could drink in complete peace, knowing that no one would dare disturb you.
For someone like myself, that was heaven, and we lost a slice of it the other night.
Yours
SPYGOD
ps: "I read with interest" is just shorthand for "Get your !@#$ facts straight, you worthless !@#$ hack."
(SPYGOD is listening to Sunday Papers (Joe Jackson) and drinking something really !@#$ cold)
Monday, September 19, 2011
9/16/11 - EXHIBIT X: A Letter from Boris Yeltsin, Feb 23rd, 2000
My Dearest (REDACTED)
Greetings to my favorite American golubaya bl'yad. I hope you are not so busy with your carrying on that you will not have the time to read this letter. I think it has been a long time in coming, unlike yourself, from what I hear.
I am sending this letter to you as a way of saying goodbye. This is, perhaps, not how you expected to receive such a farewell. But my doctors tell me that soon I will be, as you say, going downhill very !@#$ fast. I do not know how much longer I have in which to say these things, so it is very much now or for never.
What to say? You once told me that I was a terrible man but a great drunk. I think all there is truly to say is that you are no different, my friend. I know these things very well, because I was once as you were, only not so high in the command structure.
Is this surprising to you? It should not be. All the hints I gave you, in the last few years, should have made you curious. I know that when you are curious, you will leave no stone undisturbed to find the truth.
I know that you are a very busy man, my dear (REDACTED), and I know that your rivalries and enemies take up much of your time. So perhaps you did not do, as you say, due diligence upon this drunken wreck of a man whom you had the distinct displeasure of having to brief on a number of occasions.
You have said "SPYGOD sees all," but perhaps these things were not seen? Perhaps you had no idea that I once had the power of life and death over you? Perhaps you did not know that we were rivals, after a fashion, and missed each other only by minutes on at least one occasion?
If this surprises you, then I have one last laugh. If not, then permit an old man with brains that no longer work so well his reminisces. Everything else I will say and do from here on out will be closely monitored by my replacements, so it is very much now or never.
I was very young when the Great Patriotic War occurred. I could not have volunteered to fight against the fascists as so many in my village did, even if I had wanted to, or understood. Children are only so brave, my friend.
What I did understand was that my father had spoken up against things he did not like, and was sent to a gulag as punishment when I was only three. Three long years he was there, and when he came back something was missing in him.
I looked inside those eyes, a six year old boy seeing his father so old before his time, and I decided they would never take my fire away. Even if I had to be one of them to be against them, I would not be silent. So I was not silent, and was disciplined many times for being a headstrong young man who would rather be sent home with a red face than a quiet mouth.
The official story is that I went to school and became a construction engineer in 1955. It goes on to say that I then spent many years working in plumbing, until I became one of the nomenklatura in 1968. The rest is history, but this is bull!@#$.
The government took hold of me early, while I was still in school. At first they were concerned I would become a security risk because of my father, but then they decided it would be better to try and do something in cooperation with me. I was given a case officer and shown possibilities, some of which would astound even you.
For example, you know I lost some fingers taking apart a stolen grenade when I was in school? I did not sneak into the army base. I was on the army base in an official capacity, receiving specialized training. The person I was working with in that grenade exercise made a bad mistake and lost more than his fingers, so you see that I am a lucky man.
You also can see that I am a lucky man because I am here to write these words to you. We had a mole in your Camp Rogers, and he took very extensive notes on the methods by which you and your friends became Strategic Talents. But, like the Nazis and their Black Pill, there were risks, and we did not understand them as well as you did.
So yes, I am wondering if you are laughing or cursing right now! All along, this drunken fool of a President was a superman! No wonder I could stand in front of snipers during that coup and not be afraid! No wonder I did what I wanted and had no fear!
Oh, my favorite little huesos, fear and I are the oldest of friends. We drink together often, he and I. Tonight perhaps more than is good for both of us, and that is how this letter is being written.
From later school years until 1968 I was a man inside what you refer to as SQUASH. I was fighting the fascists and the capitalists and their strategic talents, both inside Mother Russia and outside of it. I did things that were wonderful and things that were terrible, and things that were very terrible indeed. You once said I would be shocked to know of your true count, and I say to you now that I know of your true count, as best as anyone can know, and that mine is much worse than yours.
You were almost among it, once. Do you remember the night of the Red Commissar, in 1967? It was one of my last major assignments. I was under orders that if he succeeded in defecting, and did so to you, I was to find you both and eliminate you. I had many incendiary devices aboard that train, my friend. You would not have survived the conflagration.
But this was not to be. The Red Commissar is now buried somewhere under the ice in St. Petersburg. You never met him because he was slow to the meeting, and you left sooner than we expected. Perhaps you suspected we were watching, yes?
I am sure you are wondering what I was doing when I was in a more public position? The answer is very simple, my friend. SQUASH needed a man inside the power structure, causing it to be shaken up from time to time. It is in this time that I began to do what I had always promised myself I would do, when I had power. I would take that fire and use it to burn the hands that sent my father to prison.
I will not bore you with details. Such things are for lesser men and librarians, who chronicle the doings of others. I will instead trust that, now that you know of the path, you can find your way to those pieces of the puzzle you know nothing of. I have cracked the doll in half for you, my friend. Please investigate the layers beneath as you will.
I will tell you this, though. You know there came a time when SQUASH and Mother Russia parted company. I am certain you also know that when the Soviet Union was no more, they were no longer welcome at our table, and that this separation was done quite violently but very quietly. I tell you that I am the one who scored both first and last blood.
Is this something to be proud of? I do not know if I can say yes, my friend. I look back at my time in politics, and in charge of things, and I see things that are good, but many more that are bad. I did not resign merely because of my health, but out of shame. I may have stolen the fire but I was clearly not the best man to wield it.
Now it transpires that SQUASH have still managed to have the last laugh upon poor Boris. All those years and all those secrets, and the one thing that I never knew was that they were the only ones who could keep my mind together!
The shots they gave us every four years were supposed to help us with our power levels, they said. They did not tell us they gave us a dangerous disease of the mind at the same time they gave us our powers. We did not know the treatments were also to ensure our loyalty, and keep us from going, as you say, too far off the reservation.
I know that you are aware that our few defectors died of a degenerative brain disease within ten years of their betrayal. It has been nine years since my last shot, and now I have the disease also, and I may only have a few years before my mind disintegrates into atoms. I have had surgeries to ease the pain, but there is no cure, only prevention.
It would seem the only reason I have lasted this long is because, once again, it seems I am a lucky man. Even the luckiest of men is not nearly as lucky as fate itself, though, and the skull faced suka is after me now. She has my scent and I cannot hold her back for much longer.
The man who will rule in my stead is a monster. I am certain that you know this. You must watch him carefully, my friend. He has no love for what little remains of SQUASH, but you may find him even more trouble as time goes on. I would be forever in your debt if, on the day you decide you must end him, you see to it he is told that I say hello from the grave.
Of course, you may not wish to do this. Perhaps the two of you will become fast friends, as we did not. But I will always remember the day we went about in your Washington D.C., lost my security detail, became horribly drunk, and attempted to purchase a pizza while wearing only our underwear. At this time we were not men who had once tried to kill one another, however blindly, but men who were bonding over something much less important, and yet containing all the importance of the world.
It grows late and I am tired. I want to be even more drunk than I am now but then I will not be able to write any longer. A trusted friend will take this to you, and hopefully you will not shoot him for his troubles, for he is a good man.
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin lasted much longer than this bleak prognosis would indicate. He died in 2007 of congestive heart failure after a retirement that was mostly quiet, but peppered with the sort of brash but heartfelt political statements that had come to define his life as the Russian Federation's first President.
Though he did suffer from neurological damage for the rest of his life, he was able to pass it off as public drunkenness for much of that time. Whether he was merely tough or lucky, or had some advanced medical help with his condition, is unknown.
Whether he and SPYGOD had any contact after this letter was written is also unknown.
Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, is a monster. The levels of his involvement with SQUASH, before or after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is unknown.
(Yeltsin's favorite piece that SPYGOD knew of was Korsakov's Sheherazade When they got blasted on Vodka in 1995 it was Stolichnaya.)
Greetings to my favorite American golubaya bl'yad. I hope you are not so busy with your carrying on that you will not have the time to read this letter. I think it has been a long time in coming, unlike yourself, from what I hear.
I am sending this letter to you as a way of saying goodbye. This is, perhaps, not how you expected to receive such a farewell. But my doctors tell me that soon I will be, as you say, going downhill very !@#$ fast. I do not know how much longer I have in which to say these things, so it is very much now or for never.
What to say? You once told me that I was a terrible man but a great drunk. I think all there is truly to say is that you are no different, my friend. I know these things very well, because I was once as you were, only not so high in the command structure.
Is this surprising to you? It should not be. All the hints I gave you, in the last few years, should have made you curious. I know that when you are curious, you will leave no stone undisturbed to find the truth.
I know that you are a very busy man, my dear (REDACTED), and I know that your rivalries and enemies take up much of your time. So perhaps you did not do, as you say, due diligence upon this drunken wreck of a man whom you had the distinct displeasure of having to brief on a number of occasions.
You have said "SPYGOD sees all," but perhaps these things were not seen? Perhaps you had no idea that I once had the power of life and death over you? Perhaps you did not know that we were rivals, after a fashion, and missed each other only by minutes on at least one occasion?
If this surprises you, then I have one last laugh. If not, then permit an old man with brains that no longer work so well his reminisces. Everything else I will say and do from here on out will be closely monitored by my replacements, so it is very much now or never.
I was very young when the Great Patriotic War occurred. I could not have volunteered to fight against the fascists as so many in my village did, even if I had wanted to, or understood. Children are only so brave, my friend.
What I did understand was that my father had spoken up against things he did not like, and was sent to a gulag as punishment when I was only three. Three long years he was there, and when he came back something was missing in him.
I looked inside those eyes, a six year old boy seeing his father so old before his time, and I decided they would never take my fire away. Even if I had to be one of them to be against them, I would not be silent. So I was not silent, and was disciplined many times for being a headstrong young man who would rather be sent home with a red face than a quiet mouth.
The official story is that I went to school and became a construction engineer in 1955. It goes on to say that I then spent many years working in plumbing, until I became one of the nomenklatura in 1968. The rest is history, but this is bull!@#$.
The government took hold of me early, while I was still in school. At first they were concerned I would become a security risk because of my father, but then they decided it would be better to try and do something in cooperation with me. I was given a case officer and shown possibilities, some of which would astound even you.
For example, you know I lost some fingers taking apart a stolen grenade when I was in school? I did not sneak into the army base. I was on the army base in an official capacity, receiving specialized training. The person I was working with in that grenade exercise made a bad mistake and lost more than his fingers, so you see that I am a lucky man.
You also can see that I am a lucky man because I am here to write these words to you. We had a mole in your Camp Rogers, and he took very extensive notes on the methods by which you and your friends became Strategic Talents. But, like the Nazis and their Black Pill, there were risks, and we did not understand them as well as you did.
So yes, I am wondering if you are laughing or cursing right now! All along, this drunken fool of a President was a superman! No wonder I could stand in front of snipers during that coup and not be afraid! No wonder I did what I wanted and had no fear!
Oh, my favorite little huesos, fear and I are the oldest of friends. We drink together often, he and I. Tonight perhaps more than is good for both of us, and that is how this letter is being written.
From later school years until 1968 I was a man inside what you refer to as SQUASH. I was fighting the fascists and the capitalists and their strategic talents, both inside Mother Russia and outside of it. I did things that were wonderful and things that were terrible, and things that were very terrible indeed. You once said I would be shocked to know of your true count, and I say to you now that I know of your true count, as best as anyone can know, and that mine is much worse than yours.
You were almost among it, once. Do you remember the night of the Red Commissar, in 1967? It was one of my last major assignments. I was under orders that if he succeeded in defecting, and did so to you, I was to find you both and eliminate you. I had many incendiary devices aboard that train, my friend. You would not have survived the conflagration.
But this was not to be. The Red Commissar is now buried somewhere under the ice in St. Petersburg. You never met him because he was slow to the meeting, and you left sooner than we expected. Perhaps you suspected we were watching, yes?
I am sure you are wondering what I was doing when I was in a more public position? The answer is very simple, my friend. SQUASH needed a man inside the power structure, causing it to be shaken up from time to time. It is in this time that I began to do what I had always promised myself I would do, when I had power. I would take that fire and use it to burn the hands that sent my father to prison.
I will not bore you with details. Such things are for lesser men and librarians, who chronicle the doings of others. I will instead trust that, now that you know of the path, you can find your way to those pieces of the puzzle you know nothing of. I have cracked the doll in half for you, my friend. Please investigate the layers beneath as you will.
I will tell you this, though. You know there came a time when SQUASH and Mother Russia parted company. I am certain you also know that when the Soviet Union was no more, they were no longer welcome at our table, and that this separation was done quite violently but very quietly. I tell you that I am the one who scored both first and last blood.
Is this something to be proud of? I do not know if I can say yes, my friend. I look back at my time in politics, and in charge of things, and I see things that are good, but many more that are bad. I did not resign merely because of my health, but out of shame. I may have stolen the fire but I was clearly not the best man to wield it.
Now it transpires that SQUASH have still managed to have the last laugh upon poor Boris. All those years and all those secrets, and the one thing that I never knew was that they were the only ones who could keep my mind together!
The shots they gave us every four years were supposed to help us with our power levels, they said. They did not tell us they gave us a dangerous disease of the mind at the same time they gave us our powers. We did not know the treatments were also to ensure our loyalty, and keep us from going, as you say, too far off the reservation.
I know that you are aware that our few defectors died of a degenerative brain disease within ten years of their betrayal. It has been nine years since my last shot, and now I have the disease also, and I may only have a few years before my mind disintegrates into atoms. I have had surgeries to ease the pain, but there is no cure, only prevention.
It would seem the only reason I have lasted this long is because, once again, it seems I am a lucky man. Even the luckiest of men is not nearly as lucky as fate itself, though, and the skull faced suka is after me now. She has my scent and I cannot hold her back for much longer.
The man who will rule in my stead is a monster. I am certain that you know this. You must watch him carefully, my friend. He has no love for what little remains of SQUASH, but you may find him even more trouble as time goes on. I would be forever in your debt if, on the day you decide you must end him, you see to it he is told that I say hello from the grave.
Of course, you may not wish to do this. Perhaps the two of you will become fast friends, as we did not. But I will always remember the day we went about in your Washington D.C., lost my security detail, became horribly drunk, and attempted to purchase a pizza while wearing only our underwear. At this time we were not men who had once tried to kill one another, however blindly, but men who were bonding over something much less important, and yet containing all the importance of the world.
It grows late and I am tired. I want to be even more drunk than I am now but then I will not be able to write any longer. A trusted friend will take this to you, and hopefully you will not shoot him for his troubles, for he is a good man.
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin lasted much longer than this bleak prognosis would indicate. He died in 2007 of congestive heart failure after a retirement that was mostly quiet, but peppered with the sort of brash but heartfelt political statements that had come to define his life as the Russian Federation's first President.
Though he did suffer from neurological damage for the rest of his life, he was able to pass it off as public drunkenness for much of that time. Whether he was merely tough or lucky, or had some advanced medical help with his condition, is unknown.
Whether he and SPYGOD had any contact after this letter was written is also unknown.
Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, is a monster. The levels of his involvement with SQUASH, before or after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, is unknown.
(Yeltsin's favorite piece that SPYGOD knew of was Korsakov's Sheherazade When they got blasted on Vodka in 1995 it was Stolichnaya.)
Sunday, September 18, 2011
9/15/11 - Brief Notations from The Black Rat of Armagh
* It's been a little under a month since the city Converted. Since then, everyone's been able to be reunited with their homes and things. As usual, there's the normal Conversion insurance claims to deal with, and insurance scams to investigate, but that's not my !@#$ problem. My !@#$ problem is where the !@#$ I'm going to get another perfect, pre-secondary revolution marble bust of Lenin for my toilet tank. It was a gift from Boris, himself, after the attempted coup pretty much spelled the end of any hope of a Communist revival. It was also something of a peacemaking gesture on his part, as it was accompanied by a few crates of good, proper Russian vodka. I have a lot of fond memories about what I did when I was drunk on that vodka, and fond memories of what other people tell me I did while drunk on that vodka, so having the bust get smashed during the Conversion is a real !@#$ letdown.
* What wasn't a letdown was to see that the city's gotten to grips with its new landscape rather nicely. They've made new friends, new enemies, and new relationships, same as always. The days of this neighborhood and that neighborhood have been effectively over since then, and any attempts to put them back together on ethnic or societal lines have been rendered futile. What's the point of having a Chinatown if the thing's likely to be scattered all over town every few years? Some people say this is turning the city into a monoculture. I say it's becoming more of a melting pot. And I have a gun, so there.
* And no, I didn't need my spy network to tell me this. I'm learning it from walking. Between yesterday's trip to the Bangkok Eight, and today's slog down to the Black Rat, I've had time to get a good long look at things. Which is !@#$ hilarious if you think about it. How many times did I stand up, wave a gun around a black budget hearing, and insist that, new super technology fliberty-goo things or not, we needed boots on the ground, eyes in the walls, and ears in the cornfields more than spy satellites and boom mikes? Not that we didn't need those other things, too, but HumInt is worth more than its weight in gold.
* Speaking of The Black Rat, it's deserted today, which is weird. It's just me and the bartender, and he looks kind of scared. I think it's because Aaron isn't here to protect him from me and my needs. Not that I really need anything from him, anyway. Gods know where his hands have been, much less his !@#$. No, as long as he keeps bringing me my Singha, no one will get hurt, which is a lot more than I can say for some of my other projects.
* Project Number !@#$ One: GORGON. We have tracked their subs. We know where they went. The bad news is that it's not underwater. It's !@#$ underground. And that means they could literally be anywhere. So I think our good friend Myron the Ersatz Underman is going to be earning his !@#$ keep real !@#$ soon.
* Project Number Two: HONEYCOMB. Thanks to them tipping their hands a little too much, lately, we have developed the technology needed to be able to intercept and change their HIVE signals into meaningless noise. This means that, the next time we take one down, another one will not reactivate to take its' place. This means that we can actually fight them to a !@#$ standstill for once, provided we can determine the location of most of those currently active HIVEs and carry out a simultaneous strike on at least three-quarters of them. That'll keep them from manually turning the others on, or changing the signals.
* Project Number Three: The Legion. I was not amused by the exploding Katooey. I was really not !@#$ amused by the Flaming Patriot. And I sure as !@#$ !@#$ was not !@#$ amused by that Moloch !@#$ during the hurricane. But turning my flying car into a death trap is the absolute !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ limit. I have some plans in motion to deal with them, as of this morning's revelation from the Ice Palace, at which point the proper equipment and personnel will have to be brought into play. But as soon as we got that up and running, there's going to be a !@#$ reckoning that will make what I've done so far look like a playful little slap on the ass at your birthday party.
* Speaking of "what I've done so far," so far no one suspects a !@#$ thing other than the official story. Even the President's come around on it. But I have this weird feeling that this one's going to blow back on me, somehow. That could just be post-wetwork guilt sneaking in around the corners of my well-trained lack of a conscience, of course, but it feels different, somehow. So thank the gods for beer or I'd be really paralyzed right now.
* Speaking of which, where the !@#$ did that bartender go? I need another Singha. Hey, !@#$head! Beer! ... Hmm, !@#$ disappeared. That's weird.
* On the subject of disappearing, I had a weird bit of info come across my desk this morning, courtesy of the Director of DAMOCLES. It seems the Lizard People are leaving Earth in large numbers. Not all of them, obviously, but enough to be concerned. They won't say why, either, except to say "(Unintelligible Concept) Is Coming," which is no !@#$ help at all.
* Oh yeah, DAMOCLES. I am now enjoying a much better working relationship with their Director, after I got the goods on him and kicked down his wall. Our first big collaboration is going to be figuring out what the !@#$ happened to that ufo his people went after, over a month back. We now know that we know absolutely nothing, except that once his people got close enough, their last transmission was a Code Triple Black order to vaporize the area from orbit. Under those circumstances the Director's unable to override it, or stop to ask questions. He just authorizes the switch and tries to figure out what the !@#$ happened based on what's left, which, in this case, was less than nothing. And he hates not knowing, hence his reluctance to tell me a !@#$ thing. I can respect that. I can respect him. (He's also got nice buns...)
* !@#$ it. I called for beer. If I don't get it I'm just gonna get it myself and put it on the !@#$ tab...
*Oh.
* Well, of all the places to run into an old friend. You gonna waste time talking or you just gonna try and burn me again? Cause boy do I have some surprises for --
TRANSMISSION LOST
(SPYGOD was listening to Monoculture (Soft Cell) and enjoying a Singha. Now...?)
* What wasn't a letdown was to see that the city's gotten to grips with its new landscape rather nicely. They've made new friends, new enemies, and new relationships, same as always. The days of this neighborhood and that neighborhood have been effectively over since then, and any attempts to put them back together on ethnic or societal lines have been rendered futile. What's the point of having a Chinatown if the thing's likely to be scattered all over town every few years? Some people say this is turning the city into a monoculture. I say it's becoming more of a melting pot. And I have a gun, so there.
* And no, I didn't need my spy network to tell me this. I'm learning it from walking. Between yesterday's trip to the Bangkok Eight, and today's slog down to the Black Rat, I've had time to get a good long look at things. Which is !@#$ hilarious if you think about it. How many times did I stand up, wave a gun around a black budget hearing, and insist that, new super technology fliberty-goo things or not, we needed boots on the ground, eyes in the walls, and ears in the cornfields more than spy satellites and boom mikes? Not that we didn't need those other things, too, but HumInt is worth more than its weight in gold.
* Speaking of The Black Rat, it's deserted today, which is weird. It's just me and the bartender, and he looks kind of scared. I think it's because Aaron isn't here to protect him from me and my needs. Not that I really need anything from him, anyway. Gods know where his hands have been, much less his !@#$. No, as long as he keeps bringing me my Singha, no one will get hurt, which is a lot more than I can say for some of my other projects.
* Project Number !@#$ One: GORGON. We have tracked their subs. We know where they went. The bad news is that it's not underwater. It's !@#$ underground. And that means they could literally be anywhere. So I think our good friend Myron the Ersatz Underman is going to be earning his !@#$ keep real !@#$ soon.
* Project Number Two: HONEYCOMB. Thanks to them tipping their hands a little too much, lately, we have developed the technology needed to be able to intercept and change their HIVE signals into meaningless noise. This means that, the next time we take one down, another one will not reactivate to take its' place. This means that we can actually fight them to a !@#$ standstill for once, provided we can determine the location of most of those currently active HIVEs and carry out a simultaneous strike on at least three-quarters of them. That'll keep them from manually turning the others on, or changing the signals.
* Project Number Three: The Legion. I was not amused by the exploding Katooey. I was really not !@#$ amused by the Flaming Patriot. And I sure as !@#$ !@#$ was not !@#$ amused by that Moloch !@#$ during the hurricane. But turning my flying car into a death trap is the absolute !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ limit. I have some plans in motion to deal with them, as of this morning's revelation from the Ice Palace, at which point the proper equipment and personnel will have to be brought into play. But as soon as we got that up and running, there's going to be a !@#$ reckoning that will make what I've done so far look like a playful little slap on the ass at your birthday party.
* Speaking of "what I've done so far," so far no one suspects a !@#$ thing other than the official story. Even the President's come around on it. But I have this weird feeling that this one's going to blow back on me, somehow. That could just be post-wetwork guilt sneaking in around the corners of my well-trained lack of a conscience, of course, but it feels different, somehow. So thank the gods for beer or I'd be really paralyzed right now.
* Speaking of which, where the !@#$ did that bartender go? I need another Singha. Hey, !@#$head! Beer! ... Hmm, !@#$ disappeared. That's weird.
* On the subject of disappearing, I had a weird bit of info come across my desk this morning, courtesy of the Director of DAMOCLES. It seems the Lizard People are leaving Earth in large numbers. Not all of them, obviously, but enough to be concerned. They won't say why, either, except to say "(Unintelligible Concept) Is Coming," which is no !@#$ help at all.
* Oh yeah, DAMOCLES. I am now enjoying a much better working relationship with their Director, after I got the goods on him and kicked down his wall. Our first big collaboration is going to be figuring out what the !@#$ happened to that ufo his people went after, over a month back. We now know that we know absolutely nothing, except that once his people got close enough, their last transmission was a Code Triple Black order to vaporize the area from orbit. Under those circumstances the Director's unable to override it, or stop to ask questions. He just authorizes the switch and tries to figure out what the !@#$ happened based on what's left, which, in this case, was less than nothing. And he hates not knowing, hence his reluctance to tell me a !@#$ thing. I can respect that. I can respect him. (He's also got nice buns...)
* !@#$ it. I called for beer. If I don't get it I'm just gonna get it myself and put it on the !@#$ tab...
*Oh.
* Well, of all the places to run into an old friend. You gonna waste time talking or you just gonna try and burn me again? Cause boy do I have some surprises for --
TRANSMISSION LOST
(SPYGOD was listening to Monoculture (Soft Cell) and enjoying a Singha. Now...?)
Thursday, September 15, 2011
9/14/11 - Walkies
So, no flying car. Not anymore. It went boom.
No vehicle of any kind, for that matter. This kind of crimps my style, as you might expect.
But I can't just stay in The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. all night long. I can't and I won't. I'll get cabin fever, son. The kind that ends with me drunk as !@#$, horny as all !@#$, and trying to bring down the Moon with a big enough rocket.
And no one !@#$ wants that.
So tonight I'm going to go out on foot. I'm going to walk the streets of Neo York City, just another person in the multitudes.
(Another person carrying enough ordinance to blow up three tenements and a McDonalds, maybe, but still just another person.)
I pause a little too long by the door, watching the crowds go up and down the street. I see their eyes and wonder if I can stand to be seen by them. Am I really this scared of normal people? Or just unused to human contact without being in charge of it?
Come on you old !@#$ queer. One foot in front of the other. You and me and he makes three, up and down the streets of the city fair.
It takes a strong person to take these kinds of streets and not collapse inwards, like a snowman in the sun. The heaving mass of humanity presses up against, going this way and that, forwards, backwards, sideways, all ways.
The way is full of endless jostling and bumps, and hardly a "sorry" to be heard. But what would be the point, anyway? It's not like you know them, or will ever see them again.
No, son. "Sorry" is for people you want to remember you kindly. But here, it's all persons for themselves in the sea of the city. And with faceless waves battering to port and starboard, it takes me a full ten minutes to acclimatize to the concrete surf.
600 nail-biting, teeth-grinding seconds of not punching, gouging, and biting the noses off of the many people who get too close for comfort. 600 seconds, and then it finally occurs to the small, throbbing lizard portion of my brain that I really can just walk down this path without killing every person who steps into me.
After that, it's easy, and I can save my viciousness for the truly clueless and rude, of which there are far too !@#$ many. Thankfully there are several open trash cans between here and my destination, and the rude often fit perfectly after a few small alterations.
(Is that cheering or screaming from the masses? Running feet or applause? I can't tell, now.)
The route is an endless pattern of sidewalk and intersection, with white walkers and red hands guarding the spaces between. I'm tempted to ignore them but I seem to lose the will to do so after a while. The city has me, now, and I'm nothing more than a cell in her bloodstream, pumped along in time with the secret heart buried under the concrete and steel.
There's a cloud of noise settled around me, now, floating in time with my own two feet. Whistles and horns. Squeals and revs. Curses and hellos. Cellphone jibber-jabber. The occasional thing even I can't identify, but might be a cosmic string !@#$ something in the Oort cloud, or maybe one of those new cars backfiring.
Signs everywhere in every language. Coffee. Restaurants. Hair places. Boutiques. Corner stores. Bars. Pubs. Clubs.
More restaurants. More bars. More !@#$ coffee.
Eventually I get where I'm going. Bangkok Eight. The crazy man behind the counter has my order waiting and just sort of smiles at me. I'm a little afraid to know when and how he's smiled it before, given his unique job history.
(I also know not to ask.)
Food in hand, it's back the way I came. I should be going to get a katooey or two from the other other meat market, but for some reason I just can't do it on foot. I need the extra armor of a car around me to buy sex. It differentiates me from the skeedy weirdos who come up on foot, and usually go running the other way when they realize the ladies are packing something more than Asian delight in their panties.
I need that edge. It's part of the unwritten contract we have with this city. You wear ties and jackets for upscale diners, and drive mean cars for hooker negotiations. Everything else can be handled by explosive-tipped bullets.
Or a trip to the corner store to get some decent beer. Mr. Singh keeps a good rotating selection in the back. I pick out something from somewhere I've never had before and hope it goes well with Baby Head Noodles, or whatever the !@#$ I've ordered with my Tom Yam Goong tonight.
Back to The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. Back upstairs. I regain my sense of self in the long elevator ride up. I'm no longer lost in the crowd. I remember who I am and what I could have done to most of the people out there while I was amongst them.
I want to say !@#$ this. !@#$ this in the ear until the brains fly out the other side. I want to say I need a new car, as soon as yesterday.
But at the same time, I recognize something important. I'm someone different out there. I'm no longer just SPYGOD, lording it over the masses in a dangerous vehicle. I'm another man in Neo York City, just trying to get from here to there in one piece.
Maybe I need to go walkies more often, just so I remember what it feels like to be them.
(SPYGOD is listening to Mmm Skyscraper I Love You (Underworld) and wondering what the !@#$ he bought at the corner store)
No vehicle of any kind, for that matter. This kind of crimps my style, as you might expect.
But I can't just stay in The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. all night long. I can't and I won't. I'll get cabin fever, son. The kind that ends with me drunk as !@#$, horny as all !@#$, and trying to bring down the Moon with a big enough rocket.
And no one !@#$ wants that.
So tonight I'm going to go out on foot. I'm going to walk the streets of Neo York City, just another person in the multitudes.
(Another person carrying enough ordinance to blow up three tenements and a McDonalds, maybe, but still just another person.)
I pause a little too long by the door, watching the crowds go up and down the street. I see their eyes and wonder if I can stand to be seen by them. Am I really this scared of normal people? Or just unused to human contact without being in charge of it?
Come on you old !@#$ queer. One foot in front of the other. You and me and he makes three, up and down the streets of the city fair.
It takes a strong person to take these kinds of streets and not collapse inwards, like a snowman in the sun. The heaving mass of humanity presses up against, going this way and that, forwards, backwards, sideways, all ways.
The way is full of endless jostling and bumps, and hardly a "sorry" to be heard. But what would be the point, anyway? It's not like you know them, or will ever see them again.
No, son. "Sorry" is for people you want to remember you kindly. But here, it's all persons for themselves in the sea of the city. And with faceless waves battering to port and starboard, it takes me a full ten minutes to acclimatize to the concrete surf.
600 nail-biting, teeth-grinding seconds of not punching, gouging, and biting the noses off of the many people who get too close for comfort. 600 seconds, and then it finally occurs to the small, throbbing lizard portion of my brain that I really can just walk down this path without killing every person who steps into me.
After that, it's easy, and I can save my viciousness for the truly clueless and rude, of which there are far too !@#$ many. Thankfully there are several open trash cans between here and my destination, and the rude often fit perfectly after a few small alterations.
(Is that cheering or screaming from the masses? Running feet or applause? I can't tell, now.)
The route is an endless pattern of sidewalk and intersection, with white walkers and red hands guarding the spaces between. I'm tempted to ignore them but I seem to lose the will to do so after a while. The city has me, now, and I'm nothing more than a cell in her bloodstream, pumped along in time with the secret heart buried under the concrete and steel.
There's a cloud of noise settled around me, now, floating in time with my own two feet. Whistles and horns. Squeals and revs. Curses and hellos. Cellphone jibber-jabber. The occasional thing even I can't identify, but might be a cosmic string !@#$ something in the Oort cloud, or maybe one of those new cars backfiring.
Signs everywhere in every language. Coffee. Restaurants. Hair places. Boutiques. Corner stores. Bars. Pubs. Clubs.
More restaurants. More bars. More !@#$ coffee.
Eventually I get where I'm going. Bangkok Eight. The crazy man behind the counter has my order waiting and just sort of smiles at me. I'm a little afraid to know when and how he's smiled it before, given his unique job history.
(I also know not to ask.)
Food in hand, it's back the way I came. I should be going to get a katooey or two from the other other meat market, but for some reason I just can't do it on foot. I need the extra armor of a car around me to buy sex. It differentiates me from the skeedy weirdos who come up on foot, and usually go running the other way when they realize the ladies are packing something more than Asian delight in their panties.
I need that edge. It's part of the unwritten contract we have with this city. You wear ties and jackets for upscale diners, and drive mean cars for hooker negotiations. Everything else can be handled by explosive-tipped bullets.
Or a trip to the corner store to get some decent beer. Mr. Singh keeps a good rotating selection in the back. I pick out something from somewhere I've never had before and hope it goes well with Baby Head Noodles, or whatever the !@#$ I've ordered with my Tom Yam Goong tonight.
Back to The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. Back upstairs. I regain my sense of self in the long elevator ride up. I'm no longer lost in the crowd. I remember who I am and what I could have done to most of the people out there while I was amongst them.
I want to say !@#$ this. !@#$ this in the ear until the brains fly out the other side. I want to say I need a new car, as soon as yesterday.
But at the same time, I recognize something important. I'm someone different out there. I'm no longer just SPYGOD, lording it over the masses in a dangerous vehicle. I'm another man in Neo York City, just trying to get from here to there in one piece.
Maybe I need to go walkies more often, just so I remember what it feels like to be them.
(SPYGOD is listening to Mmm Skyscraper I Love You (Underworld) and wondering what the !@#$ he bought at the corner store)
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
9/13/11 - The Question You Just Don't Ask.
It never fails. Every few years, maybe twice a decade, I'll be at a D.C. power party, having a good time, and some jack!@#$ came on up and ask me THE QUESTION.
The last time it happened was maybe three years ago, perpetrated by some new guy I didn't recognize. He didn't look drunk, and he didn't look like a rube, so I supposed he was doing it of his own sound mind and volition. Poor fool probably just didn't know any better.
Having said that, I still had to lobotomize with his own !@#$ champagne flute. I think I got about halfway through the operation before a massive security detail managed to strong-arm some sense into me, or at least get my hands off his perforated noggin. But I think that, following that nasty display of attempted poolside brain surgery, the message was made clear as crystal once again.
That message is !@#$ simple: you do not !@#$ ask SPYGOD about his secret vulnerabilities.
"Are you impervious to bullets?" I'll tolerate, because anyone ought to know by now the answer to that is yes. Usually.
"Is it true you once took on fifty ninjas armed with swords and the only blood on the floor was theirs?" is acceptable, because while it isn't !@#$ true, it makes me sound like an even bigger bad!@#$ than I already am. Plus the blood was actually someone else's.
And "You can jump out of airplanes without parachutes and live?" is also acceptable, because I've got an image to maintain, and, as we learned once again just yesterday, the answer is "!@#$ yes." I don't !@#$ recommend it if you're supposed to be jumping into battle, of course, but every once in a while it feels strangely liberating to take the space junk express down and kiss the sweet, sweet Earth at terminal velocity.
But all these people trying to needle me into giving away my kryptonite at a party? !@#$ that.
!@#$, !@#$ that in the ear with a spoon. A really big !@#$ spoon that's been sharpened into a shiv by a man arrested for !@#$ dead cows outside his ex-girlfriend's kindergarten window. On a dare. For beer.
I mean, I don't mind if people understand that even I have limits. I may be immortal but I'm not invulnerable. I have my stress limits and breaking points, just like everyone else.
The big difference is that, unlike most people, I get to bounce back from that kind of trauma.
Like last night, for example. Remember how I fell out of the sky while avoiding being barbequed in my flying car? Remember that I fell Gods know how many !@#$ stories and slammed face-first into a shiny new Lexus? Anyone else would be a big, wet splatter, or maybe a large helping of bone and meat soup served in a skin wrapper.
Me? I broke everything, but then it all knitted itself back together (painfully) while I lay there and grunted. It was all back to normal in about ten minutes, and I could actually move again after another five. Which was nice because I was getting really !@#$ sick of telling the person whose car I just smashed to shut the !@#$ up or I'd... well, I'd do something. Once I could aim again.
(And yes, he shut the !@#$ up once I sat up and glared at him. And prolapsed into his pants. Sometimes lady fate is kind to me.)
But yes, I hurt like a mother!@#$. I still do. You know that awful feeling you get in your back muscles, right above your hip, when you move it just wrong and it snaps? And then you can't bend down and get back up again, sit down, sit up, or !@#$slam the three katooeys you brought home to make up for a failed Thai food run, without that nasty limiting twinge?
Well, I've had it all night and all day, and it !@#$ sucks. It'll be gone by tomorrow, I'm sure, but still.
So yes, bones come back together as they should be, but muscles still hurt a while thereafter. Bullets bounce off but sting like !@#$. Sharp surfaces dull but sting. Crush and splatter injuries reform. Spilled blood comes back.
Burns... that's a different subject.
Now, keep in mind that I'm immortal. I can't die. But some injuries take a lot longer to heal than others. And fire, for some weird !@#$ reason, takes !@#$ forever.
There was this one time, early on, when I rushed into a towering inferno to get something for The COMPANY. I managed to do it, but by the time I got out of the building I was a literal walking skeleton: black skin hanging from bones, charred organs falling out of ruptured skin. It hurt like living unholy !@#$, even without nerve endings, and when they started to regrow it itched like I was the center performer in an ant orgy.
And it took me six !@#$ months to heal up completely. Six months of itching, burning, and the nasty, wet tickling that comes as your body slowly puts its charred self back together again.
That, son, is why SPYGOD is very leery of fire. I'll take a burn or two for America if I have to, but no more "run into the conflagration wearing only an eyepatch and a smile" bull!@#$ for me.
But I don't advertise that weakness. There's only a few people who know about it, and then know that I know that they know, and they know that if they tell anyone else I'm going to do something really bad to their lower descending colon with a pound of sand and a blowtorch.
So what does it mean if I've had four, count 'em, four assassination attempts in about three months that are all !@#$ fire based? It means either one of them blabbed, which I highly doubt, or one of my foes found out.
Or, worse still, a friend is now a foe, and is trying to have my crispy !@#$ served on a platter.
It doesn't involve clones or giant metal insects, so I doubt it's HONEYCOMB, and this doesn't seem like GORGON's style. So that leaves either SQUASH or someone from the Legion, and I did just tweak their noses twice in the last few weeks.
Which means that, in time honored style, I am now contractually obligated to find out who the !@#$ it was, and respond in kind. For America. Let the games begin!
(As soon as I can get out of bed and stand up straight again, anyway...)
(SPYGOD is listening to Disco Inferno (The Trammps) and having some maximum strength elephant knock-out drugs for pain killer)
The last time it happened was maybe three years ago, perpetrated by some new guy I didn't recognize. He didn't look drunk, and he didn't look like a rube, so I supposed he was doing it of his own sound mind and volition. Poor fool probably just didn't know any better.
Having said that, I still had to lobotomize with his own !@#$ champagne flute. I think I got about halfway through the operation before a massive security detail managed to strong-arm some sense into me, or at least get my hands off his perforated noggin. But I think that, following that nasty display of attempted poolside brain surgery, the message was made clear as crystal once again.
That message is !@#$ simple: you do not !@#$ ask SPYGOD about his secret vulnerabilities.
"Are you impervious to bullets?" I'll tolerate, because anyone ought to know by now the answer to that is yes. Usually.
"Is it true you once took on fifty ninjas armed with swords and the only blood on the floor was theirs?" is acceptable, because while it isn't !@#$ true, it makes me sound like an even bigger bad!@#$ than I already am. Plus the blood was actually someone else's.
And "You can jump out of airplanes without parachutes and live?" is also acceptable, because I've got an image to maintain, and, as we learned once again just yesterday, the answer is "!@#$ yes." I don't !@#$ recommend it if you're supposed to be jumping into battle, of course, but every once in a while it feels strangely liberating to take the space junk express down and kiss the sweet, sweet Earth at terminal velocity.
But all these people trying to needle me into giving away my kryptonite at a party? !@#$ that.
!@#$, !@#$ that in the ear with a spoon. A really big !@#$ spoon that's been sharpened into a shiv by a man arrested for !@#$ dead cows outside his ex-girlfriend's kindergarten window. On a dare. For beer.
I mean, I don't mind if people understand that even I have limits. I may be immortal but I'm not invulnerable. I have my stress limits and breaking points, just like everyone else.
The big difference is that, unlike most people, I get to bounce back from that kind of trauma.
Like last night, for example. Remember how I fell out of the sky while avoiding being barbequed in my flying car? Remember that I fell Gods know how many !@#$ stories and slammed face-first into a shiny new Lexus? Anyone else would be a big, wet splatter, or maybe a large helping of bone and meat soup served in a skin wrapper.
Me? I broke everything, but then it all knitted itself back together (painfully) while I lay there and grunted. It was all back to normal in about ten minutes, and I could actually move again after another five. Which was nice because I was getting really !@#$ sick of telling the person whose car I just smashed to shut the !@#$ up or I'd... well, I'd do something. Once I could aim again.
(And yes, he shut the !@#$ up once I sat up and glared at him. And prolapsed into his pants. Sometimes lady fate is kind to me.)
But yes, I hurt like a mother!@#$. I still do. You know that awful feeling you get in your back muscles, right above your hip, when you move it just wrong and it snaps? And then you can't bend down and get back up again, sit down, sit up, or !@#$slam the three katooeys you brought home to make up for a failed Thai food run, without that nasty limiting twinge?
Well, I've had it all night and all day, and it !@#$ sucks. It'll be gone by tomorrow, I'm sure, but still.
So yes, bones come back together as they should be, but muscles still hurt a while thereafter. Bullets bounce off but sting like !@#$. Sharp surfaces dull but sting. Crush and splatter injuries reform. Spilled blood comes back.
Burns... that's a different subject.
Now, keep in mind that I'm immortal. I can't die. But some injuries take a lot longer to heal than others. And fire, for some weird !@#$ reason, takes !@#$ forever.
There was this one time, early on, when I rushed into a towering inferno to get something for The COMPANY. I managed to do it, but by the time I got out of the building I was a literal walking skeleton: black skin hanging from bones, charred organs falling out of ruptured skin. It hurt like living unholy !@#$, even without nerve endings, and when they started to regrow it itched like I was the center performer in an ant orgy.
And it took me six !@#$ months to heal up completely. Six months of itching, burning, and the nasty, wet tickling that comes as your body slowly puts its charred self back together again.
That, son, is why SPYGOD is very leery of fire. I'll take a burn or two for America if I have to, but no more "run into the conflagration wearing only an eyepatch and a smile" bull!@#$ for me.
But I don't advertise that weakness. There's only a few people who know about it, and then know that I know that they know, and they know that if they tell anyone else I'm going to do something really bad to their lower descending colon with a pound of sand and a blowtorch.
So what does it mean if I've had four, count 'em, four assassination attempts in about three months that are all !@#$ fire based? It means either one of them blabbed, which I highly doubt, or one of my foes found out.
Or, worse still, a friend is now a foe, and is trying to have my crispy !@#$ served on a platter.
It doesn't involve clones or giant metal insects, so I doubt it's HONEYCOMB, and this doesn't seem like GORGON's style. So that leaves either SQUASH or someone from the Legion, and I did just tweak their noses twice in the last few weeks.
Which means that, in time honored style, I am now contractually obligated to find out who the !@#$ it was, and respond in kind. For America. Let the games begin!
(As soon as I can get out of bed and stand up straight again, anyway...)
(SPYGOD is listening to Disco Inferno (The Trammps) and having some maximum strength elephant knock-out drugs for pain killer)
Monday, September 12, 2011
9/12/11 - Lessons in Escaping Death pt 12437 - The Exploding Flying Car
So we've learned some important lessons today, son. I'm going to sit here on what's left of this pricey Lexus, drink myself blind, and list them out for you.
Lesson Number One: When you get in your flying car after a couple days in orbit, check it before you drive it. And when SPYGOD says "check it," he does not mean put the little slidey-pop thing on the tires and have some fun with the dipstick. He means look all over for bugs, tracking devices, hitchhikers, and, most relevant in this case, !@#$ bombs.
Lesson Number Two: If you fail to heed lesson number one (like a certain !@#$head who will remain nameless right now while he gets drunk) and get the sense, while driving, that something is just a little off in the balance and performance, do not !@#$ chalk it up to it needing a trip to the garage. Pull the !@#$ over and check it the !@#$ out.
If you're still too stupid to take lesson number two to heart, then you are left with no one to blame when something unexpected happens in mid-flight. Normally, this would be something like an unexpected message in a CD in the player, or a surprise oral pleasuring from the Katooey hooker someone paid good money to tempt death by hiding in the back seat.
However, when the surprise is the car being engulfed in a giant !@#$ ball of fire, thirty stories up and halfway to the Bangkok Eight, we are led to Lesson Number Three: When in doubt, jump through the !@#$ windshield! That, at least, I did right.
Lesson Number Four: GTFAAFAYC! (Get The !@#$ Away As Fast As You Can). I didn't have any problem doing that, either, though the law of gravity helped a lot.
Unfortunately, we come to Lesson Number Five: if you're not on the ground, know how to fly. Under normal circumstances this would be SOP, as I usually have an anti-gravity pod in my belt. However, my belt is sitting back in my room, as, in my hurry to get my takeaway order and go cruise the other other meat market, I went without.
Lesson Number Six: If you can't fly, grab something that can. Well !@#$ that in the ear. Does this look that that movie where Indiana Jones kept getting his !@#$ handed to him by the shotgun hobo guy? No? Well do you see any other flying cars? No.
(And between you and me, pigeons do not handle being used as lifebuoys.)
Lesson Number Seven: If you can't grab something that can fly, grab something that isn't. Which leads us to the harsh reality concerning skyscraper-jumping heroes who lose their footing and have to reach out for something to break their fall, or at least something nice to fall into: comics are just full of !@#$.
Flagpoles? They snap.
Awnings? They tear.
Balconies? They !@#$ break your hands like they were made out of matzoh bread.
The smashed-in Lexus I'm sitting on right now? Painful. Very !@#$ painful. I think I broke every bone in my body, which meant that I wasn't able to get up and explain the situation to the concerned citizens who came out of their shops and restaurants to see where the "meteor" came down.
The good news is that, by the time I finished healing up, my poor flying car's self destruct mechanism did the right and noble thing. This means that all that weird-!@#$ alien weaponry under the hood will not be falling into anyone's hands, thank you very much.
The bad news is that I have just discovered that, along with my belt, I left my wallet at home. Not that I expect the police to give me any !@#$ about flying an exploding flying car without a license, but Bangkok Eight is ten minutes away and five minutes from closing up.
And I know better than to try and kick down the door and demand my !@#$ food. I do not need my !@#$ shot off by a former human smuggler with a shotgun for a leg. Not again, anyway.
So, hungry and broken, but still not dead, I will be requesting a full moment of silence for my poor, beloved flying car. It couldn't get me everywhere I needed to go, but it got me there in retro style, and seemed to smile when I melted people that didn't get out of our !@#$ way.
Good night, my sweet. Hail and farewell.
(SPYGOD is listening to Cars (Gary Numan, by way of Fear Factory) and having some Fireball cinnamon whiskey. Do NOT laugh)
Lesson Number One: When you get in your flying car after a couple days in orbit, check it before you drive it. And when SPYGOD says "check it," he does not mean put the little slidey-pop thing on the tires and have some fun with the dipstick. He means look all over for bugs, tracking devices, hitchhikers, and, most relevant in this case, !@#$ bombs.
Lesson Number Two: If you fail to heed lesson number one (like a certain !@#$head who will remain nameless right now while he gets drunk) and get the sense, while driving, that something is just a little off in the balance and performance, do not !@#$ chalk it up to it needing a trip to the garage. Pull the !@#$ over and check it the !@#$ out.
If you're still too stupid to take lesson number two to heart, then you are left with no one to blame when something unexpected happens in mid-flight. Normally, this would be something like an unexpected message in a CD in the player, or a surprise oral pleasuring from the Katooey hooker someone paid good money to tempt death by hiding in the back seat.
However, when the surprise is the car being engulfed in a giant !@#$ ball of fire, thirty stories up and halfway to the Bangkok Eight, we are led to Lesson Number Three: When in doubt, jump through the !@#$ windshield! That, at least, I did right.
Lesson Number Four: GTFAAFAYC! (Get The !@#$ Away As Fast As You Can). I didn't have any problem doing that, either, though the law of gravity helped a lot.
Unfortunately, we come to Lesson Number Five: if you're not on the ground, know how to fly. Under normal circumstances this would be SOP, as I usually have an anti-gravity pod in my belt. However, my belt is sitting back in my room, as, in my hurry to get my takeaway order and go cruise the other other meat market, I went without.
Lesson Number Six: If you can't fly, grab something that can. Well !@#$ that in the ear. Does this look that that movie where Indiana Jones kept getting his !@#$ handed to him by the shotgun hobo guy? No? Well do you see any other flying cars? No.
(And between you and me, pigeons do not handle being used as lifebuoys.)
Lesson Number Seven: If you can't grab something that can fly, grab something that isn't. Which leads us to the harsh reality concerning skyscraper-jumping heroes who lose their footing and have to reach out for something to break their fall, or at least something nice to fall into: comics are just full of !@#$.
Flagpoles? They snap.
Awnings? They tear.
Balconies? They !@#$ break your hands like they were made out of matzoh bread.
The smashed-in Lexus I'm sitting on right now? Painful. Very !@#$ painful. I think I broke every bone in my body, which meant that I wasn't able to get up and explain the situation to the concerned citizens who came out of their shops and restaurants to see where the "meteor" came down.
The good news is that, by the time I finished healing up, my poor flying car's self destruct mechanism did the right and noble thing. This means that all that weird-!@#$ alien weaponry under the hood will not be falling into anyone's hands, thank you very much.
The bad news is that I have just discovered that, along with my belt, I left my wallet at home. Not that I expect the police to give me any !@#$ about flying an exploding flying car without a license, but Bangkok Eight is ten minutes away and five minutes from closing up.
And I know better than to try and kick down the door and demand my !@#$ food. I do not need my !@#$ shot off by a former human smuggler with a shotgun for a leg. Not again, anyway.
So, hungry and broken, but still not dead, I will be requesting a full moment of silence for my poor, beloved flying car. It couldn't get me everywhere I needed to go, but it got me there in retro style, and seemed to smile when I melted people that didn't get out of our !@#$ way.
Good night, my sweet. Hail and farewell.
(SPYGOD is listening to Cars (Gary Numan, by way of Fear Factory) and having some Fireball cinnamon whiskey. Do NOT laugh)
Sunday, September 11, 2011
9/10-11/11 - The Attack that Wasn't, 10 Years On.
Lost about a day getting to and from Deep Ten for an overdue talk with its elusive Director. In that time, as we glided in over Neo York City, and I looked at the Twin Towers from space, I realized that we were coming up on a peculiar anniversary.
(No, not Freddie. That was a few days before. If only some people would live forever.)
But how do you celebrate a terrorist attack that wasn't, especially not so long before we mourn the worst terrorist attack on American soil that was?
Ten years ago today was September 11th, 2001. If certain plans by a now-marginal terrorist group had come to fruition, a small but very determined band of Islamic radicals would have hijacked four passenger planes and crashed them into buildings.
They'd planned to do the Twin Towers (then still next to each other), the Pentagon, and the Capitol. The death toll would have been in the thousands, and societal and political chaos inflicted could have been total.
They had it all planned out, perfectly, but then things just kind of fell apart. Wrong person went to the wrong place. Word slipped out and the wrong people overheard. Things collapsed around their shoes like they'd been gutted standing up.
So only the planes bound for the Twin Towers took off. The other two were grounded and the terrorists nabbed before they even got on board. And when the ones in the air got to Neo York City, the defensive grid grabbed them in midair and put them down on the ground.
At the time, it was called a sign of how well we, as the American intelligence community, worked together. The NSA had its ears open, the Bureau was on the ground, the Company saw them before they even got here. And then it was just a matter of grabbing them before they got too far.
Heck, we even got most of the passengers off the two compromised planes alive, along with enough hijackers to grill. How's that for teamwork? "America, !@#$ Yeah!"
Of course, that was total and complete bull!@#$. We didn't connect all the dots until those two planes were in the air, and just barely caught the other two groups. If it hadn't been for the city's unique abilities, which that sorry little band of cave-dwelling filth had apparently not been informed of, it would have been a terrible day indeed.
But we lucked out. The President hustled away from reading "My Pet Goat" to grade schoolers so he could get to a press conference and congratulate the victors. Speeches were made, backs got slapped, and medals got passed around like cheap Cognac at my favorite Vietnamese place.
And they gave me permission to slip into Afghanistan and have a few sharp words with the slimy little !@#$ who'd masterminded the whole thing. What's left of him is on the wall of heads in my penthouse, third down the line from that one guy who looks like someone you know.
(I didn't even bother to label it. !@#$ him.)
When you !@#$ up, mistakes are counted and heads roll. Anyone who's still got a skull and a job by the end of the day gets to learn from those mistakes. And hopefully they will learn from them.
But when you succeed, even if it's by the skin of your teeth, no one learns a !@#$ thing. Which is why we didn't look at the mistakes we were made leading up to the sorry abortion of a terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001. We just moved on to the next crisis, and the next, and the next.
And that's probably why, a little under two months later, the Computer Hell Virus took us by complete surprise. We hadn't learned to work together. We hadn't learned to share intel. We hadn't been paying attention to actionable alerts or assembling the pieces of the greater puzzle.
We were all looking every which way but together, and then it was too late to look away.
In two months, the 11/9 industry will crank up again, just like it does every November. Only this time ten times more than usual for the tenth anniversary of that black, November day.
They'll be celebrating police officers and firefighters and rescue workers, which is good. They'll be selling t-shirts and hats and useless gee-gaws, which isn't so good. There will be ceremonies and memorials and speeches at graveyards. There will be tears and red faces and eyes screwed shut from crying.
The televisions will be filled with talking heads telling us how they feel, and how we ought to feel. There will be politicians trying to curry favor and candidates trying to get votes. There will be anger and recrimination, sadness and sympathy. Widespread calls for revenge and quiet voices asking for understanding.
And there will be the horrible pictures and films we wish we'd never seen, but will never be allowed to not see, ever again.
Ten years on. Ten years of war and threats of war. Ten years of wondering if we went too far with post-disaster security. Ten years of realizing we definitely !@#$ up a few times. Ten years of people asking uncomfortable questions (some ridiculous, some right on the money).
Ten years of hating the wrong people and protesting at the wrong buildings.
Every November 9th I wall myself in, bury myself in work, and make !@#$ sure that nothing is escaping my sight. But every September 11th I remind myself why I have to do that.
Because I looked away and smiled, glad we were so !@#$ lucky that their plan went wrong, instead of asking what our mistakes were.
Never again. Not on my !@#$ watch.
No matter how much I get !@#$ed up and down and over, forwards backwards and sideways, I only have to ever hear the words "We're under attack" and I'm up on my feet and sober again. But I also have to be in control of what goes on before the attack, too. I have to learn from my mistakes before they happen all over again.
Otherwise, what the !@#$ am I doing?
In a related note, I have promised hizzonner not to light any 11/9 "souvenir" carts on fire with my penis this year. I don't know if that counts as a mistake or not, but I guess we all do our part to help the city mourn with a degree of dignity.
(SPYGOD is listening to Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush, by way of Placebo) and having some Weybacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale)
(No, not Freddie. That was a few days before. If only some people would live forever.)
But how do you celebrate a terrorist attack that wasn't, especially not so long before we mourn the worst terrorist attack on American soil that was?
Ten years ago today was September 11th, 2001. If certain plans by a now-marginal terrorist group had come to fruition, a small but very determined band of Islamic radicals would have hijacked four passenger planes and crashed them into buildings.
They'd planned to do the Twin Towers (then still next to each other), the Pentagon, and the Capitol. The death toll would have been in the thousands, and societal and political chaos inflicted could have been total.
They had it all planned out, perfectly, but then things just kind of fell apart. Wrong person went to the wrong place. Word slipped out and the wrong people overheard. Things collapsed around their shoes like they'd been gutted standing up.
So only the planes bound for the Twin Towers took off. The other two were grounded and the terrorists nabbed before they even got on board. And when the ones in the air got to Neo York City, the defensive grid grabbed them in midair and put them down on the ground.
At the time, it was called a sign of how well we, as the American intelligence community, worked together. The NSA had its ears open, the Bureau was on the ground, the Company saw them before they even got here. And then it was just a matter of grabbing them before they got too far.
Heck, we even got most of the passengers off the two compromised planes alive, along with enough hijackers to grill. How's that for teamwork? "America, !@#$ Yeah!"
Of course, that was total and complete bull!@#$. We didn't connect all the dots until those two planes were in the air, and just barely caught the other two groups. If it hadn't been for the city's unique abilities, which that sorry little band of cave-dwelling filth had apparently not been informed of, it would have been a terrible day indeed.
But we lucked out. The President hustled away from reading "My Pet Goat" to grade schoolers so he could get to a press conference and congratulate the victors. Speeches were made, backs got slapped, and medals got passed around like cheap Cognac at my favorite Vietnamese place.
And they gave me permission to slip into Afghanistan and have a few sharp words with the slimy little !@#$ who'd masterminded the whole thing. What's left of him is on the wall of heads in my penthouse, third down the line from that one guy who looks like someone you know.
(I didn't even bother to label it. !@#$ him.)
When you !@#$ up, mistakes are counted and heads roll. Anyone who's still got a skull and a job by the end of the day gets to learn from those mistakes. And hopefully they will learn from them.
But when you succeed, even if it's by the skin of your teeth, no one learns a !@#$ thing. Which is why we didn't look at the mistakes we were made leading up to the sorry abortion of a terrorist attack on September 11th, 2001. We just moved on to the next crisis, and the next, and the next.
And that's probably why, a little under two months later, the Computer Hell Virus took us by complete surprise. We hadn't learned to work together. We hadn't learned to share intel. We hadn't been paying attention to actionable alerts or assembling the pieces of the greater puzzle.
We were all looking every which way but together, and then it was too late to look away.
In two months, the 11/9 industry will crank up again, just like it does every November. Only this time ten times more than usual for the tenth anniversary of that black, November day.
They'll be celebrating police officers and firefighters and rescue workers, which is good. They'll be selling t-shirts and hats and useless gee-gaws, which isn't so good. There will be ceremonies and memorials and speeches at graveyards. There will be tears and red faces and eyes screwed shut from crying.
The televisions will be filled with talking heads telling us how they feel, and how we ought to feel. There will be politicians trying to curry favor and candidates trying to get votes. There will be anger and recrimination, sadness and sympathy. Widespread calls for revenge and quiet voices asking for understanding.
And there will be the horrible pictures and films we wish we'd never seen, but will never be allowed to not see, ever again.
Ten years on. Ten years of war and threats of war. Ten years of wondering if we went too far with post-disaster security. Ten years of realizing we definitely !@#$ up a few times. Ten years of people asking uncomfortable questions (some ridiculous, some right on the money).
Ten years of hating the wrong people and protesting at the wrong buildings.
Every November 9th I wall myself in, bury myself in work, and make !@#$ sure that nothing is escaping my sight. But every September 11th I remind myself why I have to do that.
Because I looked away and smiled, glad we were so !@#$ lucky that their plan went wrong, instead of asking what our mistakes were.
Never again. Not on my !@#$ watch.
No matter how much I get !@#$ed up and down and over, forwards backwards and sideways, I only have to ever hear the words "We're under attack" and I'm up on my feet and sober again. But I also have to be in control of what goes on before the attack, too. I have to learn from my mistakes before they happen all over again.
Otherwise, what the !@#$ am I doing?
In a related note, I have promised hizzonner not to light any 11/9 "souvenir" carts on fire with my penis this year. I don't know if that counts as a mistake or not, but I guess we all do our part to help the city mourn with a degree of dignity.
(SPYGOD is listening to Running Up That Hill (Kate Bush, by way of Placebo) and having some Weybacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale)
Saturday, September 10, 2011
9/8-9/11 - Five Days, Five Conversations: pt 2
9/8/11
6:00 AM
HEPTAGON BASEMENT, CELL A-574
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
GUARD: Here you go, sir.
SPYGOD: How's our favorite super villain impostor doing today?
GUARD: "Underman's" been !@#$ quiet, sir. I think he's afraid we'll flood the cell with nasty smells and the latest Justin Beiber album, again.
SPYGOD: Good. Wait outside. Don't open the door until I give the knock. Any other knock, flood the cell with Death Potion #9.
GUARD: Yes sir.
*door clangs shut*
SPYGOD: Well good morning, Myron. I bet you're wondering why I've called us all here...
UNDERMAN: Please don't hurt me again. I said I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry-
SPYGOD: Shut. The !@#$. Up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. I'm shutting up now.
SPYGOD: Myron Guthrie Volaar. 35. Born in Madison, Wisconsin. Graduated top of his class at Dailey Technical School. Did not attend college. Worked at Great Lakes Scrapyards for most of your adult life, but spent the last five years under-employed due to a quote-endquote unfortunate incident involving some missing product and equipment. Then you drop off the grid for a year. Then we find you in Underman's old drill tank, wearing his old uniform, and stuffing your fat !@#$ with donuts and coffee before pulling off a bank robbery. Have I got all that about right?
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: You may speak now, son.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. You have all that right.
SPYGOD: Good. Nice to meet you, Myron. I'm the devil. This is hell.
UNDERMAN: I told you I'd cooperate.
SPYGOD: I know you did. Now, here, this is for you.
UNDERMAN: What is it...?
SPYGOD: Breakfast. Double sausage and egg explosion from Belly Busters. I hope you're not one of those pissy little vegetarians, but just in case I got you the cheesy hash browns. And coffee.
UNDERMAN: Coffee...
SPYGOD: I did not !@#$ in it this time.
UNDERMAN: Is it... safe to eat?
SPYGOD: Oh, you mean 'did you put hardcore elephant diarrhea-inducing sauce on it the way you did to that sandwich the first day I got here and was demanding a lawyer and my civil rights and everything I should have gotten, if I wasn't a prisoner of the sort of group that listens to things like that and laughs and then amputates your legs below the kneecaps and !@#$ you with them in both ends'?
UNDERMAN... um... yes...
SPYGOD: No.
UNDERMAN: No what?
SPYGOD: No. I did not poison your food. In fact, let me prove it. *chomp*
UNDERMAN: You ate my sandwich...
SPYGOD: And now I'm going to eat your hash browns...
UNDERMAN: No! No.. I'll eat them...
SPYGOD: Good idea. They good?
UNDERMAN: Yes. My god, yes.
SPYGOD: I did !@#$ on them.
UNDERMAN: Oh my god... ewwwwwwwwwwww *barf*
SPYGOD: Oh, wait, I didn't. I was just kidding. Sorry.
UNDERMAN: Oh you... you !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ of a !@#$. I !@#$ hate you! !@#$ !@#$ kill me !@#$ die !@#$ kill me and !@#$ !@#$
SPYGOD: You know, I can survive the gas the guard'll pump into the cell if bang the door wrong. So you might want to watch the gutter language, there, son.
UNDERMAN: I don't care! I don't !@#$ care! Just do it, please! Do it!
SPYGOD: You want me to gas you?
UNDERMAN: Yes!
SPYGOD: AW, !@#$ that. How about I take this gun, here, and shoot you with it?
UNDERMAN: Anything!
SPYGOD: How about my bare hands? How about I just choke you to death with my own !@#$, huh? You want that? You dead with my glowing alien love-god mansnake down your throat? You want that? Huh?
UNDERMAN: ... *whimper*
SPYGOD: So how does it feel to be !@#$ powerless, you little worm? How does it feel to be staring death in the face and begging for it because you can not !@#$ see any other way out of the situation?
UNDERMAN: *crying*
SPYGOD: Is this what you thought was going to happen when you bought that superdrill, Myron? Is this what you thought was going to happen when you put on that suit and pretended to be the real Underman?
UNDERMAN: *crying*
SPYGOD: This is how they feel, you fat little !@#$. This is how ordinary people feel when someone like you comes crashing into their lives with some stupid !@#$ super villain gimmick. They're minding their own !@#$ business and living their !@#$ lives and then you come in and ruin them. And all they can do is run and hide, and when they can't fight anymore, and they can't hide, they just want it to be over.
UNDERMAN: *throws up again, weakly*
SPYGOD: I mean, jesus !@#$ christ, Myron. You're going to have to help me !@#$ understand this. You're smart enough to make that drill tank actually work after all these years. You've got the brains to navigate the inner planet. Are you going to tell me you didn't know this was how it was going to end, eventually?
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: Well, maybe I am giving you more credit that you deserve. I mean, you clearly can't organize a heist to save your !@#$ life. We catch you with your pants down buying !@#$ donuts, for crying out loud.
UNDERMAN: I just wanted... ...
SPYGOD: Money? Sex? Power? Fame?
UNDERMAN: ... I wanted to be free.
SPYGOD: Free? You're living in the United States of America, son. You don't get much freer than this.
UNDERMAN: That's bull!@#$. I didn't want to be free to go to work and life and crank out 2.5 kids like every other good little doobie out there. I wanted to live free like it meant something. I wanted adventure. I wanted to go where I wanted, take what I wanted, and do what I wanted. I wanted to explore the world and live in it.
SPYGOD: And steal from people in order to do it? And kill them?
UNDERMAN: I never !@#$ killed anyone. I never hurt anyone either if I could help it.
SPYGOD: That's true, you didn't. You just got wind that the Legion was holding an estate sale for a retiring super villain and bought up the lot.
UNDERMAN: Yeah.
SPYGOD: And goodness only knows how you got all that !@#$ money. 546 million dollars?
UNDERMAN: I'm still paying off the loan.
SPYGOD: Hence the poorly-planned bank heists.
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: But you could have made it go faster. They must have offered you better jobs to work it off.
UNDERMAN: Yeah, but... they all involved killing someone. Drilling a hole into someone's house. Dropping a city. Opening a fault line.
SPYGOD: And you didn't want to hurt anyone.
UNDERMAN: No. I just wanted-
SPYGOD: Adventure. Yes. We've covered this. Shut up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir.
SPYGOD: ...
(full minute of silence passes)
SPYGOD: You were a Boy Scout, weren't you?
UNDERMAN: I made Eagle, sir.
SPYGOD: *sighs*
UNDERMAN: Is that bad? Did I say a bad thing?
SPYGOD: Shut up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir.
SPYGOD: Okay, Myron. Here's the deal. You are now on special retainer to The COMPANY. This means your life is mine. This means your ass is mine. You work for me now. You will do exactly what I tell you. You will make what I tell you. You will carry out whatever mission I choose to give you, totally and completely, with no deviations whatsoever. Do. You. !@#$. Understand?
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. I understand.
SPYGOD: Good. You wanted adventure, Myron, and by God you're going to get it even if it kills you.
*special knock*
SPYGOD: Give him ten minutes, and then take him up and get him cleaned up. Decent meal, good bed, !@#$ if he wants it. Be courteous but firm. He's one of us, now.
GUARD: Understood, sir. No more Justin Beiber?
SPYGOD: Well, maybe ten seconds somewhere around the five minute mark. Keep him guessing.
GUARD: Yes sir.
9/9/11
10:59 PM
DEEP TEN, DIRECTORS OFFICE
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
*wall gets kicked down*
DIR. STRAFFER: What in the-
SPYGOD: I see your secretary wasn't kidding. There wasn't a door to this room. Hope you don't mind if I made my own...
DIR. STRAFFER: Are you insane? I'll have security all over you so fast-
SPYGOD: Don't bother. Your guards are all asleep and the robots don't work for you anymore.
DIR. STRAFFER: What?
SPYGOD: Didn't you hear me the first time? You don't have your security, anymore. It's just me and you and this room.
DIR. STRAFFER: Okay. Well, I'm not even going to ask how you got up here without us knowing about it.
SPYGOD: Trade secrets, mother!@#$. Kind of like this.
*tosses him a photo*
DIR. STRAFFER: What is this supposed to be?
SPYGOD: A very good satellite photo of the Flier, the day that the two-headed zebra got away from us.
DIR. STRAFFER: I can see the alien. This is from one of our platforms. How did you-
SPYGOD: Trade. !@#$. Secrets.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, I don't see what the problem is. We got rid of your problem for you.
SPYGOD: Yes, you did. Now, look at the timestamp.
DIR. STRAFFER: And?
SPYGOD: It's from before we contacted you. A full five minutes before.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well...
SPYGOD: And I also have all these photos, here, of his falling to Earth and slipping into us, also from one of your platforms. So you were tracking it the entire time. So you knew about it the entire time.
DIR. STRAFFER: Alright then, so we did.
SPYGOD: And you sent that thing in... why?
DIR. STRAFFER: We didn't send it in. We knew it was there and wanted to see what it was going to to do.
SPYGOD: And you didn't feel like !@#$ telling me that we had a potentially hostile alien on board the Flier, sitting in on our meetings and stunning us all with its !@#$ conversational French skills?
DIR. STRAFFER: No. I knew that if it became belligerent you could deal with it. As it was, it was clearly operating with a very powerful person-to-person perception filter, which suggests it was there for reconnaissance only.
SPYGOD: Sabotage.
DIR. STRAFFER: I beg your pardon?
SPYGOD: We did a complete sweep of the Flier the next day. It spent the time it was there taking pictures of key areas and trying to implant spy equipment. Guess whose?
DIR. STRAFFER: One of your science terrorist groups?
SPYGOD: No.
*tosses an evidence bag*
DIR. STRAFFER: These are ours.
SPYGOD: Yes. They are.
DIR. STRAFFER: I didn't authorize the bugging of your Flier, SPYGOD. That would have been rude.
SPYGOD: No, you wouldn't. But not because it would have been rude. Because if you'd been caught, we'd be having this conversation in an airlock. With your skinny !@#$ hanging out in a vacuum-
DIR. STRAFFER: Ten inches.
SPYGOD: What?
DIR. STRAFFER: My penis is ten inches long. Uncut.
SPYGOD: Well, that's something I didn't know.
DIR. STRAFFER: I thought SPYGOD knew all? Anyway, now that we've got our respective !@#$ sizes out of the way, because I know how long yours is, Mr. Frequent Indecent Exposure, let's think about this.
SPYGOD: Yes. Let's. Who is trying to get us to fight each other, Straffer? Who put that alien up to doing this, knowing that you'd stand by and watch, which would make you look really !@#$ bad when I found the DAMOCLES bugs?
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, you've dealt with ABWEHR. GORGON is missing in action, but they were running their network through Deep Ten. HONEYCOMB?
SPYGOD: This isn't their style. No giant metal insects or clone soldiers. Besides, they'd probably just try and blow the Flier up.
DIR. STRAFFER: So. GORGON. Or a new player in town.
SPYGOD: Or something else. Something that doesn't want you looking out, or in.
DIR. STRAFFER: Because of course you'd beat me.
SPYGOD: Where's your security, Director?
DIR. STRAFFER: Good point. So something new's entered the game. What are we going to do about it?
SPYGOD: "We"?
DIR. STRAFFER: Yes. We. We're on the same side, SPYGOD. Our methods aren't too different. We're both happy to let others twist in the wind so long as we get what we need. And it's all about the bigger picture in the end. It's just that my picture is a !@#$ of a lot bigger than yours.
SPYGOD: ...
DIR. STRAFFER: I take it that's how they say "Yes, Director Straffer" on Planet SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: Yes, actually. It is. So how do they say "here's the truth about what was lying on the ocean floor and cost The COMPANY a !@#$ submarine" on Planet Straffer?
DIR. STRAFFER: You mean you don't know?
SPYGOD: No, I don't.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, that makes two of us. SPYGOD. And that makes me pretty worried.
(SPYGOD is listening to Absurd (Fluke) and having freeze dried coffee)
6:00 AM
HEPTAGON BASEMENT, CELL A-574
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
GUARD: Here you go, sir.
SPYGOD: How's our favorite super villain impostor doing today?
GUARD: "Underman's" been !@#$ quiet, sir. I think he's afraid we'll flood the cell with nasty smells and the latest Justin Beiber album, again.
SPYGOD: Good. Wait outside. Don't open the door until I give the knock. Any other knock, flood the cell with Death Potion #9.
GUARD: Yes sir.
*door clangs shut*
SPYGOD: Well good morning, Myron. I bet you're wondering why I've called us all here...
UNDERMAN: Please don't hurt me again. I said I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry-
SPYGOD: Shut. The !@#$. Up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. I'm shutting up now.
SPYGOD: Myron Guthrie Volaar. 35. Born in Madison, Wisconsin. Graduated top of his class at Dailey Technical School. Did not attend college. Worked at Great Lakes Scrapyards for most of your adult life, but spent the last five years under-employed due to a quote-endquote unfortunate incident involving some missing product and equipment. Then you drop off the grid for a year. Then we find you in Underman's old drill tank, wearing his old uniform, and stuffing your fat !@#$ with donuts and coffee before pulling off a bank robbery. Have I got all that about right?
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: You may speak now, son.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. You have all that right.
SPYGOD: Good. Nice to meet you, Myron. I'm the devil. This is hell.
UNDERMAN: I told you I'd cooperate.
SPYGOD: I know you did. Now, here, this is for you.
UNDERMAN: What is it...?
SPYGOD: Breakfast. Double sausage and egg explosion from Belly Busters. I hope you're not one of those pissy little vegetarians, but just in case I got you the cheesy hash browns. And coffee.
UNDERMAN: Coffee...
SPYGOD: I did not !@#$ in it this time.
UNDERMAN: Is it... safe to eat?
SPYGOD: Oh, you mean 'did you put hardcore elephant diarrhea-inducing sauce on it the way you did to that sandwich the first day I got here and was demanding a lawyer and my civil rights and everything I should have gotten, if I wasn't a prisoner of the sort of group that listens to things like that and laughs and then amputates your legs below the kneecaps and !@#$ you with them in both ends'?
UNDERMAN... um... yes...
SPYGOD: No.
UNDERMAN: No what?
SPYGOD: No. I did not poison your food. In fact, let me prove it. *chomp*
UNDERMAN: You ate my sandwich...
SPYGOD: And now I'm going to eat your hash browns...
UNDERMAN: No! No.. I'll eat them...
SPYGOD: Good idea. They good?
UNDERMAN: Yes. My god, yes.
SPYGOD: I did !@#$ on them.
UNDERMAN: Oh my god... ewwwwwwwwwwww *barf*
SPYGOD: Oh, wait, I didn't. I was just kidding. Sorry.
UNDERMAN: Oh you... you !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ !@#$ of a !@#$. I !@#$ hate you! !@#$ !@#$ kill me !@#$ die !@#$ kill me and !@#$ !@#$
SPYGOD: You know, I can survive the gas the guard'll pump into the cell if bang the door wrong. So you might want to watch the gutter language, there, son.
UNDERMAN: I don't care! I don't !@#$ care! Just do it, please! Do it!
SPYGOD: You want me to gas you?
UNDERMAN: Yes!
SPYGOD: AW, !@#$ that. How about I take this gun, here, and shoot you with it?
UNDERMAN: Anything!
SPYGOD: How about my bare hands? How about I just choke you to death with my own !@#$, huh? You want that? You dead with my glowing alien love-god mansnake down your throat? You want that? Huh?
UNDERMAN: ... *whimper*
SPYGOD: So how does it feel to be !@#$ powerless, you little worm? How does it feel to be staring death in the face and begging for it because you can not !@#$ see any other way out of the situation?
UNDERMAN: *crying*
SPYGOD: Is this what you thought was going to happen when you bought that superdrill, Myron? Is this what you thought was going to happen when you put on that suit and pretended to be the real Underman?
UNDERMAN: *crying*
SPYGOD: This is how they feel, you fat little !@#$. This is how ordinary people feel when someone like you comes crashing into their lives with some stupid !@#$ super villain gimmick. They're minding their own !@#$ business and living their !@#$ lives and then you come in and ruin them. And all they can do is run and hide, and when they can't fight anymore, and they can't hide, they just want it to be over.
UNDERMAN: *throws up again, weakly*
SPYGOD: I mean, jesus !@#$ christ, Myron. You're going to have to help me !@#$ understand this. You're smart enough to make that drill tank actually work after all these years. You've got the brains to navigate the inner planet. Are you going to tell me you didn't know this was how it was going to end, eventually?
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: Well, maybe I am giving you more credit that you deserve. I mean, you clearly can't organize a heist to save your !@#$ life. We catch you with your pants down buying !@#$ donuts, for crying out loud.
UNDERMAN: I just wanted... ...
SPYGOD: Money? Sex? Power? Fame?
UNDERMAN: ... I wanted to be free.
SPYGOD: Free? You're living in the United States of America, son. You don't get much freer than this.
UNDERMAN: That's bull!@#$. I didn't want to be free to go to work and life and crank out 2.5 kids like every other good little doobie out there. I wanted to live free like it meant something. I wanted adventure. I wanted to go where I wanted, take what I wanted, and do what I wanted. I wanted to explore the world and live in it.
SPYGOD: And steal from people in order to do it? And kill them?
UNDERMAN: I never !@#$ killed anyone. I never hurt anyone either if I could help it.
SPYGOD: That's true, you didn't. You just got wind that the Legion was holding an estate sale for a retiring super villain and bought up the lot.
UNDERMAN: Yeah.
SPYGOD: And goodness only knows how you got all that !@#$ money. 546 million dollars?
UNDERMAN: I'm still paying off the loan.
SPYGOD: Hence the poorly-planned bank heists.
UNDERMAN: ...
SPYGOD: But you could have made it go faster. They must have offered you better jobs to work it off.
UNDERMAN: Yeah, but... they all involved killing someone. Drilling a hole into someone's house. Dropping a city. Opening a fault line.
SPYGOD: And you didn't want to hurt anyone.
UNDERMAN: No. I just wanted-
SPYGOD: Adventure. Yes. We've covered this. Shut up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir.
SPYGOD: ...
(full minute of silence passes)
SPYGOD: You were a Boy Scout, weren't you?
UNDERMAN: I made Eagle, sir.
SPYGOD: *sighs*
UNDERMAN: Is that bad? Did I say a bad thing?
SPYGOD: Shut up.
UNDERMAN: Yes sir.
SPYGOD: Okay, Myron. Here's the deal. You are now on special retainer to The COMPANY. This means your life is mine. This means your ass is mine. You work for me now. You will do exactly what I tell you. You will make what I tell you. You will carry out whatever mission I choose to give you, totally and completely, with no deviations whatsoever. Do. You. !@#$. Understand?
UNDERMAN: Yes sir. I understand.
SPYGOD: Good. You wanted adventure, Myron, and by God you're going to get it even if it kills you.
*special knock*
SPYGOD: Give him ten minutes, and then take him up and get him cleaned up. Decent meal, good bed, !@#$ if he wants it. Be courteous but firm. He's one of us, now.
GUARD: Understood, sir. No more Justin Beiber?
SPYGOD: Well, maybe ten seconds somewhere around the five minute mark. Keep him guessing.
GUARD: Yes sir.
9/9/11
10:59 PM
DEEP TEN, DIRECTORS OFFICE
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
*wall gets kicked down*
DIR. STRAFFER: What in the-
SPYGOD: I see your secretary wasn't kidding. There wasn't a door to this room. Hope you don't mind if I made my own...
DIR. STRAFFER: Are you insane? I'll have security all over you so fast-
SPYGOD: Don't bother. Your guards are all asleep and the robots don't work for you anymore.
DIR. STRAFFER: What?
SPYGOD: Didn't you hear me the first time? You don't have your security, anymore. It's just me and you and this room.
DIR. STRAFFER: Okay. Well, I'm not even going to ask how you got up here without us knowing about it.
SPYGOD: Trade secrets, mother!@#$. Kind of like this.
*tosses him a photo*
DIR. STRAFFER: What is this supposed to be?
SPYGOD: A very good satellite photo of the Flier, the day that the two-headed zebra got away from us.
DIR. STRAFFER: I can see the alien. This is from one of our platforms. How did you-
SPYGOD: Trade. !@#$. Secrets.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, I don't see what the problem is. We got rid of your problem for you.
SPYGOD: Yes, you did. Now, look at the timestamp.
DIR. STRAFFER: And?
SPYGOD: It's from before we contacted you. A full five minutes before.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well...
SPYGOD: And I also have all these photos, here, of his falling to Earth and slipping into us, also from one of your platforms. So you were tracking it the entire time. So you knew about it the entire time.
DIR. STRAFFER: Alright then, so we did.
SPYGOD: And you sent that thing in... why?
DIR. STRAFFER: We didn't send it in. We knew it was there and wanted to see what it was going to to do.
SPYGOD: And you didn't feel like !@#$ telling me that we had a potentially hostile alien on board the Flier, sitting in on our meetings and stunning us all with its !@#$ conversational French skills?
DIR. STRAFFER: No. I knew that if it became belligerent you could deal with it. As it was, it was clearly operating with a very powerful person-to-person perception filter, which suggests it was there for reconnaissance only.
SPYGOD: Sabotage.
DIR. STRAFFER: I beg your pardon?
SPYGOD: We did a complete sweep of the Flier the next day. It spent the time it was there taking pictures of key areas and trying to implant spy equipment. Guess whose?
DIR. STRAFFER: One of your science terrorist groups?
SPYGOD: No.
*tosses an evidence bag*
DIR. STRAFFER: These are ours.
SPYGOD: Yes. They are.
DIR. STRAFFER: I didn't authorize the bugging of your Flier, SPYGOD. That would have been rude.
SPYGOD: No, you wouldn't. But not because it would have been rude. Because if you'd been caught, we'd be having this conversation in an airlock. With your skinny !@#$ hanging out in a vacuum-
DIR. STRAFFER: Ten inches.
SPYGOD: What?
DIR. STRAFFER: My penis is ten inches long. Uncut.
SPYGOD: Well, that's something I didn't know.
DIR. STRAFFER: I thought SPYGOD knew all? Anyway, now that we've got our respective !@#$ sizes out of the way, because I know how long yours is, Mr. Frequent Indecent Exposure, let's think about this.
SPYGOD: Yes. Let's. Who is trying to get us to fight each other, Straffer? Who put that alien up to doing this, knowing that you'd stand by and watch, which would make you look really !@#$ bad when I found the DAMOCLES bugs?
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, you've dealt with ABWEHR. GORGON is missing in action, but they were running their network through Deep Ten. HONEYCOMB?
SPYGOD: This isn't their style. No giant metal insects or clone soldiers. Besides, they'd probably just try and blow the Flier up.
DIR. STRAFFER: So. GORGON. Or a new player in town.
SPYGOD: Or something else. Something that doesn't want you looking out, or in.
DIR. STRAFFER: Because of course you'd beat me.
SPYGOD: Where's your security, Director?
DIR. STRAFFER: Good point. So something new's entered the game. What are we going to do about it?
SPYGOD: "We"?
DIR. STRAFFER: Yes. We. We're on the same side, SPYGOD. Our methods aren't too different. We're both happy to let others twist in the wind so long as we get what we need. And it's all about the bigger picture in the end. It's just that my picture is a !@#$ of a lot bigger than yours.
SPYGOD: ...
DIR. STRAFFER: I take it that's how they say "Yes, Director Straffer" on Planet SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: Yes, actually. It is. So how do they say "here's the truth about what was lying on the ocean floor and cost The COMPANY a !@#$ submarine" on Planet Straffer?
DIR. STRAFFER: You mean you don't know?
SPYGOD: No, I don't.
DIR. STRAFFER: Well, that makes two of us. SPYGOD. And that makes me pretty worried.
(SPYGOD is listening to Absurd (Fluke) and having freeze dried coffee)
Friday, September 9, 2011
9/5-7/11 - Five Days, Five Conversations: pt 1
9/5/11
3:54 PM
2 DARBAR GRILL
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
SPYGOD: Wasn't sure you'd show.
DOSHA JOSH: I wasn't sure I would, either. But my man was free, and I hear the naan is the best outside of Delhi. So I thought I would try it.
SPYGOD: Is it?
DOSHA JOSH: Needs more of everything. But I suppose you white people will eat anything if someone says it's authentic.
SPYGOD: Except for intelligence.
DOSHA JOSH: Of course. You asked me to look into that matter for you. I have.
SPYGOD: And?
DOSHA JOSH: It's all here in this disc. I'm sure you won't mind if I ask you not to read it here.
SPYGOD: No one will know what we're up to.
DOSHA JOSH: That's not my concern. I'm actually having a nice lunch and do not feel the need to have you ruin it by turning the air blue.
SPYGOD: I think I can !@#$ accommodate. That's one I owe you.
DOSHA JOSH: Two. That's two you owe me. Three if you count me backing you in front of the others after your little adventure in Afghanistan.
SPYGOD: !@#$ had it coming. Any smart guy can see that. You're a smart guy. Should I owe you for not farting in public, too?
DOSHA JOSH: I'd settle for an obscenity-free lunch.
SPYGOD: Unless it's in !@#$ Hindi, right? I've heard you carry on, Dosha. I've known Karachi hookers with better manners.
DOSHA JOSH: "Oh eavesdropping, up yours."
SPYGOD: Whatever. Thanks for the info. And the save.
DOSHA JOSH: Not the beer?
SPYGOD: Not the greatest, but I appreciate the gesture. Kingfisher, next time?
DOSHA JOSH: Cha cha chod...
SPYGOD: He's a little too butch for me, but thanks for the offer...
TRANSCRIPT ENDS
9/6/11
6:23 AM
CENTRAL PARK
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
(REDACTED): A little late, as always.
SPYGOD: Yeah, well, I like to keep you guessing.
(REDACTED): Sadly, you're totally transparent.
SPYGOD: Only when I'm wearing the No Suit. And we all know how that goes...
(REDACTED): So, did you enjoy shooting an elderly woman in the back and face?
SPYGOD: Less than you might think, more than you might like. Why?
(REDACTED): I didn't know you had it in you.
SPYGOD: Using a dangling problem to solve a more pressing issue? Since when is that not me?
(REDACTED): One of these days you will be out of alibis and patsies. I look forward to that. I think it'll be a good day when this country finally sees you for the monster you are.
SPYGOD: I'm the best monster for the job, !@#$ face. That's why I have it. Now, can we do business, or do you want to berate me for killing a wanted supervillain who thought she'd escaped justice?
(REDACTED): ...
SPYGOD: I do still have the crime scene photos from that Senator's family, if you'd like to see why she went into hiding.
(REDACTED): Never mind that. Yes, we can do business. It's why I'm here, dealing with you.
SPYGOD: Okay then. Here's the package I agreed to. It's all the info I could find on those little conversations your people had with our former friend, plus a few extras.
(REDACTED): What sort of extras.
SPYGOD: Well, you know half of his all-female bodyguards are replicants. I know who made them. I gave you their shutdown codes. Three nonsense words you wouldn't tend to hear in that combination in Arabic, but they'll force a catastrophic brain meltdown in seconds.
(REDACTED): Hmm. That could be very useful in the near future.
SPYGOD: And did you get what I asked for?
(REDACTED): It's all there. I don't see how this isn't something you could get yourself, though.
SPYGOD: Me to know, you to get a gun up your !@#$ if you try and figure out.
(REDACTED): You really are Mr. Congeniality, today. No faggot sex last night?
SPYGOD: Tons of it, son. This is just how I deal with company !@#$ snakes in bad suits.
(REDACTED): !@#$ you.
SPYGOD: Please. I'd turn your !@#$hole inside out like a noggin-punched octopus. And that is not something you want to explain to your HMO.
(REDACTED): Whatever.
SPYGOD: Oh, and tell those !@#$ in the No Suits to stop trying to !@#$ follow me. Not only can I see them, but I can tell what they !@#$ had for lunch. Yesterday.
(REDACTED): I don't know what you're talking about--
SPYGOD: Devil dogs from Jerry's sidewalk stand. Extra peppers. The guy on the right held the mustard.
(REDACTED): ....
SPYGOD: Have a nice day, !@#$.
TRANSCRIPT ENDS
9/7/11
10:23 AM
THE B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. / THE ICE PALACE
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
DR. YESTERDAY: Hello?
SPYGOD: Why hello, doc. How are we doing today?
DR. YESTERDAY: Oh my god... I told you never to call me on an open line-
SPYGOD: Relax, doc. This thing's been scrambled so many times there's eggs out there that wish they had it this !@#$ good. I've bounced it off more satellites than the USSR had client states. No one's gonna know !@#$.
DR. YESTERDAY: Well that would be true unless I had Geri recalibrate it-
SPYGOD: And her and I have discussed this, and she made sure we've got a back door in for occasions just like this.
DR. YESTERDAY: If you say so. If he catches me-
SPYGOD: Oh man the !@#$ up, doc. He's in !@#$ Hartford making sure the !@#$ he was chasing for all those years is actually !@#$ dead. And do you really think those dumb !@#$ bluehelmets are actually going to crack your wife's back door?
DR. YESTERDAY: ... You know, you do have a point there.
SPYGOD: I do. Yes. Now, you know why I'm calling.
DR. YESTERDAY: Yes.
SPYGOD: And?
DR. YESTERDAY: No. We are no closer to figuring it out.
SPYGOD: Good. How long?
DR. YESTERDAY: Indefinitely. Geri has him wrapped around her little finger. He trusts her implicitly and cannot bring himself to believe she would lie to him.
SPYGOD: And the other matter we were discussing?
DR. YESTERDAY: I can't believe you still want me to go through with that. It's monstrous. It's a crime against science-
SPYGOD: Doc, you and I both know that if any human agency gets their hands on what's inside that room, the consequences could be !@#$ catastrophic. The only reason the world isn't being run by !@#$ supernazis is because they couldn't figure out how to make any of it work. And I think we both know the US Government doesn't have the world's greatest track record with these kinds of things.
DR. YESTERDAY: I know. I know. But it's... you're asking me to get ready to deny us access to the greatest mystery of our time, man! Can't you understand what you're doing?
SPYGOD: Saving the world, one day at a time. Do it. And if it comes down to it, I'll be the one to push the !@#$ button. Not you.
DR. YESTERDAY: That does not help my conscience in the slightest.
SPYGOD: Yeah, well, I'm not worried about that. I am worried about our long term survival as a planet, though.
DR. YESTERDAY: I will do it.
SPYGOD: Good. And the next time you're up in Neo York, could you have a look at METALMAID? I think she's off her programming, but I don't know how or how much.
DR. YESTERDAY: Sure, I'll do that. Would you like me to spackle your den while I'm at it? Maybe give your atomic sneakers a tune up?
*click*
DR. YESTERDAY: Hello?
TRANSCRIPT ENDS:
(SPYGOD is listening to The Telephone Call (Kraftwerk) and having an Empire Cream Ale.)
3:54 PM
2 DARBAR GRILL
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
SPYGOD: Wasn't sure you'd show.
DOSHA JOSH: I wasn't sure I would, either. But my man was free, and I hear the naan is the best outside of Delhi. So I thought I would try it.
SPYGOD: Is it?
DOSHA JOSH: Needs more of everything. But I suppose you white people will eat anything if someone says it's authentic.
SPYGOD: Except for intelligence.
DOSHA JOSH: Of course. You asked me to look into that matter for you. I have.
SPYGOD: And?
DOSHA JOSH: It's all here in this disc. I'm sure you won't mind if I ask you not to read it here.
SPYGOD: No one will know what we're up to.
DOSHA JOSH: That's not my concern. I'm actually having a nice lunch and do not feel the need to have you ruin it by turning the air blue.
SPYGOD: I think I can !@#$ accommodate. That's one I owe you.
DOSHA JOSH: Two. That's two you owe me. Three if you count me backing you in front of the others after your little adventure in Afghanistan.
SPYGOD: !@#$ had it coming. Any smart guy can see that. You're a smart guy. Should I owe you for not farting in public, too?
DOSHA JOSH: I'd settle for an obscenity-free lunch.
SPYGOD: Unless it's in !@#$ Hindi, right? I've heard you carry on, Dosha. I've known Karachi hookers with better manners.
DOSHA JOSH: "Oh eavesdropping, up yours."
SPYGOD: Whatever. Thanks for the info. And the save.
DOSHA JOSH: Not the beer?
SPYGOD: Not the greatest, but I appreciate the gesture. Kingfisher, next time?
DOSHA JOSH: Cha cha chod...
SPYGOD: He's a little too butch for me, but thanks for the offer...
TRANSCRIPT ENDS
9/6/11
6:23 AM
CENTRAL PARK
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
(REDACTED): A little late, as always.
SPYGOD: Yeah, well, I like to keep you guessing.
(REDACTED): Sadly, you're totally transparent.
SPYGOD: Only when I'm wearing the No Suit. And we all know how that goes...
(REDACTED): So, did you enjoy shooting an elderly woman in the back and face?
SPYGOD: Less than you might think, more than you might like. Why?
(REDACTED): I didn't know you had it in you.
SPYGOD: Using a dangling problem to solve a more pressing issue? Since when is that not me?
(REDACTED): One of these days you will be out of alibis and patsies. I look forward to that. I think it'll be a good day when this country finally sees you for the monster you are.
SPYGOD: I'm the best monster for the job, !@#$ face. That's why I have it. Now, can we do business, or do you want to berate me for killing a wanted supervillain who thought she'd escaped justice?
(REDACTED): ...
SPYGOD: I do still have the crime scene photos from that Senator's family, if you'd like to see why she went into hiding.
(REDACTED): Never mind that. Yes, we can do business. It's why I'm here, dealing with you.
SPYGOD: Okay then. Here's the package I agreed to. It's all the info I could find on those little conversations your people had with our former friend, plus a few extras.
(REDACTED): What sort of extras.
SPYGOD: Well, you know half of his all-female bodyguards are replicants. I know who made them. I gave you their shutdown codes. Three nonsense words you wouldn't tend to hear in that combination in Arabic, but they'll force a catastrophic brain meltdown in seconds.
(REDACTED): Hmm. That could be very useful in the near future.
SPYGOD: And did you get what I asked for?
(REDACTED): It's all there. I don't see how this isn't something you could get yourself, though.
SPYGOD: Me to know, you to get a gun up your !@#$ if you try and figure out.
(REDACTED): You really are Mr. Congeniality, today. No faggot sex last night?
SPYGOD: Tons of it, son. This is just how I deal with company !@#$ snakes in bad suits.
(REDACTED): !@#$ you.
SPYGOD: Please. I'd turn your !@#$hole inside out like a noggin-punched octopus. And that is not something you want to explain to your HMO.
(REDACTED): Whatever.
SPYGOD: Oh, and tell those !@#$ in the No Suits to stop trying to !@#$ follow me. Not only can I see them, but I can tell what they !@#$ had for lunch. Yesterday.
(REDACTED): I don't know what you're talking about--
SPYGOD: Devil dogs from Jerry's sidewalk stand. Extra peppers. The guy on the right held the mustard.
(REDACTED): ....
SPYGOD: Have a nice day, !@#$.
TRANSCRIPT ENDS
9/7/11
10:23 AM
THE B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. / THE ICE PALACE
TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:
DR. YESTERDAY: Hello?
SPYGOD: Why hello, doc. How are we doing today?
DR. YESTERDAY: Oh my god... I told you never to call me on an open line-
SPYGOD: Relax, doc. This thing's been scrambled so many times there's eggs out there that wish they had it this !@#$ good. I've bounced it off more satellites than the USSR had client states. No one's gonna know !@#$.
DR. YESTERDAY: Well that would be true unless I had Geri recalibrate it-
SPYGOD: And her and I have discussed this, and she made sure we've got a back door in for occasions just like this.
DR. YESTERDAY: If you say so. If he catches me-
SPYGOD: Oh man the !@#$ up, doc. He's in !@#$ Hartford making sure the !@#$ he was chasing for all those years is actually !@#$ dead. And do you really think those dumb !@#$ bluehelmets are actually going to crack your wife's back door?
DR. YESTERDAY: ... You know, you do have a point there.
SPYGOD: I do. Yes. Now, you know why I'm calling.
DR. YESTERDAY: Yes.
SPYGOD: And?
DR. YESTERDAY: No. We are no closer to figuring it out.
SPYGOD: Good. How long?
DR. YESTERDAY: Indefinitely. Geri has him wrapped around her little finger. He trusts her implicitly and cannot bring himself to believe she would lie to him.
SPYGOD: And the other matter we were discussing?
DR. YESTERDAY: I can't believe you still want me to go through with that. It's monstrous. It's a crime against science-
SPYGOD: Doc, you and I both know that if any human agency gets their hands on what's inside that room, the consequences could be !@#$ catastrophic. The only reason the world isn't being run by !@#$ supernazis is because they couldn't figure out how to make any of it work. And I think we both know the US Government doesn't have the world's greatest track record with these kinds of things.
DR. YESTERDAY: I know. I know. But it's... you're asking me to get ready to deny us access to the greatest mystery of our time, man! Can't you understand what you're doing?
SPYGOD: Saving the world, one day at a time. Do it. And if it comes down to it, I'll be the one to push the !@#$ button. Not you.
DR. YESTERDAY: That does not help my conscience in the slightest.
SPYGOD: Yeah, well, I'm not worried about that. I am worried about our long term survival as a planet, though.
DR. YESTERDAY: I will do it.
SPYGOD: Good. And the next time you're up in Neo York, could you have a look at METALMAID? I think she's off her programming, but I don't know how or how much.
DR. YESTERDAY: Sure, I'll do that. Would you like me to spackle your den while I'm at it? Maybe give your atomic sneakers a tune up?
*click*
DR. YESTERDAY: Hello?
TRANSCRIPT ENDS:
(SPYGOD is listening to The Telephone Call (Kraftwerk) and having an Empire Cream Ale.)
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