Alright, son, hand me back the !@#$ pipe. Any more shisha and your lungs are going to !@#$ing explode.
Best way to finish a meal, really. Sit out under the !@#$ stars, pass the water pipe back and forth, talk and argue and laugh until it's time to go to !@#$ing bed. Or stay up until dawn, and the first call to prayer.
Of course, we can't go outside, and you know why. Best we can do is sit here, by the !@#$ window, and try and see the stars past all those !@#$ers down there burning me in !@#$ing effigy. But still, we got the night, and the pipe, and enough !@#$ing beer to see those sorry !@#$ers off, down there.
(I might even piss out the !@#$ window and put their fires out, just for old times' sake)
I was Muslim, I could see myself doing this every !@#$ night, son. Minus the !@#$ beer and combat urination, maybe. But sleep? It's !@#$ing overrated. It's a minor death, giving up six to eight !@#$ing hours of every !@#$ day, just to keep your body running fit.
Which means you spend at least a third of your !@#$ing life useless, doing nothing but dreaming. And since we don't usually !@#$ing remember our dreams, well... I guess it's not very useful time, now is it?
So you can only imagine what poor Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir must have !@#$ing felt like, sitting in a !@#$ing jail cell for about 30 !@#$ing years. Just staring at the walls and imagining that !@#$ Unseen Emperor, coming closer to the Earth every !@#$ing time we passed by the spot he left the Earth from. Knowing that, each year, there was a big !@#$ chance the nightmare he tried to !@#$ing warn us about might come true.
And knowing that, by the time they came down there to !@#$ing get him out of that jail cell, it might already be too !@#$ing late.
Now, I have to admit it, they had a nice !@#$ setup at Le Fosse de L'enfer,. That jail cell was designed to keep just about anyone inside of it. The walls were made from the same reactive steel they use at places like The Z, down in Gitmo. They had power suppressors on the staff, all kinds of !@#$ing traps and tricks. Even a whole passageway based on Zeno's Paradox, just to make sure if there was a !@#$ing jailbreak, their convicts weren't going to get very !@#$ far.
(Same tech the COMPANY based our !@#$ Zeno Pistols on, in case you were !@#$ing wondering.)
But how did he get there in the first place? Well, there's more to this !@#$ing story, son. And now we really ought to !@#$ing get there.
Because I am on something of a time crunch, here.
So we'd established that Faraj is back, and, as you can !@#$ing imagine, Morocco's not !@#$ing happy to have this
seemingly-insane, fairly-powerful person back and shrieking warning and
come-ons to people in the !@#$ street. You could also imagine that el Wedjat and HAGANAH are !@#$ing embarrassed.
(Me? Im having a quiet laugh and wondering if this guy wants a !@#$ing drink, sometime.)
Meanwhile, the Space Service isn't !@#$ing happy, either, but for an entirely different reasons.
See,
they've been collecting and analyzing some of the things that have been
coming through that hole in space, and they can't !@#$ing figure them
out. But they know enough to know that there's some serious !@#$ on the
other side.
And if one naked guy in his 70's can make
it down to Earth in a !@#$ing drop pod, well, what's to stop these virus
soldiers from descending, infecting a whole !@#$ing city, and going out
from there?
This spells "potential panic," son. And as
my lovely boyfriend will tell you, there's nothing the Space Service
hates more than a potential panic caused by extraterrestrials,
dimension-hoppers, or weird !@#$ that slides into our reality, takes a
dump on a bunch of !@#$ing cows, and then evaporates before anyone can
take a !@#$ picture.
So the Space Service sends a
delegation to ask Morocco to lock him the !@#$ up. Just bury his !@#$
before word gets out that we're facing a microscopic invasion from Edgar
Rice Burroughs land.
And in return, they're prepared to let Morocco know who exactly ruined their space program.
Now, this is what we call a sucker's prize, son. Because once Morocco tosses this superman into Le Fosse de L'enfer, and the Space Service makes with the goods, Morocco's sitting on a piece of info that is simply not actionable. Because, with the current geopolitical situation, there is nothing that Morocco can !@#$ing do to Israel, either over or under the table.
Not a god!@#$ thing. At all.
Of
course, HAGANAH isn't happy to be sold out like that. But there's
nothing they can do because, hey, this is the Space Service we're
talking about. And since they were already on HAGANAH's !@#$ list, with
no repercussions, well... I guess Israel's need for outer space
protection's greater than not being !@#$ing named for what it did to a North
African astronaut.
Now, you might realize I said
HAGANAH. So far as Morocco knows, el Wedjat was not involved. This was
deliberate. And that's because the Space Service realizes that it !@#$ing needs el Wedjat to undo whatever the !@#$ its sorcerer actually did when it got rid of Israel's problem for it.
Why? Well, son, the Space Service is !@#$ing amazing, they sure as !@#$ can't do anything when it comes to big !@#$ portals to Dimension WTF, other than plant a geostationary defense platform there, set to "fry the !@#$ out of anything that comes through," and refuel it every year when Earth makes another !@#$ flyby, now can it?
And yes, son, that's exactly what they did. And yes, son, it !@#$ing worked. But they were smart enough to realize that an automated gun buoy couldn't do !@#$ against a full-on invasion.
So the Space Service let el Wedjat off the !@#$ hook. And they let them know they let them off the !@#$ hook. And, in return, el Wedjat ginned up its sorcerer and told him to !@#$ing reverse engineer the spell, and close it with a counterspell when the hole in space came by, again.
(On an unfortunate note, the sorcerer blew up like a !@#$ing mosquito in a bug zapper when he did it. Magic sucks !@#$, son. Stick with guns and explosives if you !@#$ing know what's good for you.)
So yeah, that's that problem taken care of. The hole's closed, Morocco's been maneuvered into a checkmate with Israel by the Space Service, which is their way of saying "!@#$ you" to all involved, and the kinky weirdo is locked up to avoid a big !@#$ panic, not to mention the mother of all gang!@#$s.
All well and good, but then the decades roll on, as they tend to, and now we need that kinky weirdo, again.
See, in wake of the !@#$ Imago, we're !@#$ing powerless against the thing that's coming. Something the Imago were !@#$ing terrified of, too, come to think of it.
And it turns out that, at a time like this, the best person we have to deal with a big !@#$ space monster that can't be defended against by conventional means is the man we've had locked up in a prison in Morocco for about 30 !@#$ing years. He's the only one who can rally the whole !@#$ planet in time.
The man all these hands worked to throw in !@#$ing prison is now the exact same man we need in charge
of bolstering the world's orbital defenses.
So the all-new, reformed Space Service has to swallow its pride, go to the Terre Unifee, and go to Le Fosse De L'enfer and get him the !@#$ out. And there's not a !@#$ thing Morocco can do about it, because they're tied up with the TU, just like everyone else. And there's not a !@#$ thing Israel can say about it, because they're gone, after what the Imago did to them.
But what about El Wedjat?
Well, now they owe me a big !@#$ favor, son. And that's because, now that the !@#$ing person who they tried to nuke while in orbit is in charge of the Space Service, and the TU is pulling their strings, the last thing they want in the world is for someone to !@#$ing lean into
Faraj's ear, and tell him exactly who arranged for him to be blown into
the Viridian Sea in the first place.
(Not that he doesn't already know that, son. But they don't know he knows. And that's how we're !@#$ing keeping it.)
So, in exchange for my silence, I got them to do me a solid, son. Just a little thing, of course. Not a lot to look at.
!@#$, you almost bumped into it, earlier tonight, and just thought it was... well, what it looks like.
But
that little thing's already paid its weight in dividends, son. A plan
is forming, and wheels are in motion, and I have the !@#$ing tools to
make it happen.
And I owe it all to a bunch of
now-deceased Super Nazi scientists, the Moroccan Air Force, and two
Israeli superspy outfits that couldn't get along.
That's
how the favor game works, son. Like I said, you need a !@#$ good memory
and a notebook the size of !@#$ing Montana to keep track of who owes
what to whom, and when, how, and why. But if you can stay on top of it,
you'll rule the roost every !@#$ time.
That's right, son. You just remember that.
And you just remember, when I'm not locked up here anymore? You have Morocco to thank for that. I might even go there, just for old time's sake, and hoist a beer with Faraj.
More shisha?
(SPYGOD is listening to Contact (Daft Punk, Aerodynamic remix) and having even more Flag Especiale)
Showing posts with label HAGANAH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HAGANAH. Show all posts
Sunday, June 1, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
1/4/13 - Lone Rangers and Strangers - Pt 2
How's your !@#$ing Moutabal, son?
Yeah, good? Glad to hear it. I wasn't totally sure I still knew how to !@#$ing make it. The Lion taught me, a long time ago when we were still !@#$ing friends, and he was still alive...
...
Yeah, the trick's to get the !@#$ eggplant right under the !@#$ing broiler. You gotta char it just enough to get it smoky, but not so much you got a big !@#$ fire in your oven instead of mezze. That and some garlic, tahini paste, lemon juice, maybe some chopped parsley, too.
And I mean the real kind of !@#$ing parsley, son. Not that curly sprig !@#$ they put on your plate when you get a burger at !@#$ing Dennys. I mean the kind you buy by the pound at the !@#$ing supermarket and never quite use before it's gone brown and nasty in your !@#$ing veggie cabinet. That's the !@#$ you need, here. Chopped just enough to give it some !@#$ing texture.
Yeah, I learned a lot about Mediterranean cooking from the Lion. That man's wife could make a tabbouleh salad that'd make you run !@#$ing barefoot across the mountains to get to dinner on time.
Better days, those, son. Better days.
...
So, one big !@#$ cooking demonstration and ten !@#$ing Flag Speciales ago, we were talking about the big !@#$ magic of favors in the superspy game. Possibly the second most important thing you !@#$ing need to know, after how and when to !@#$ing blackmail someone, and to never !@#$ing pick a !@#$ fight unless you got a back-up plan that could get the Devil out of Hell.
(Well, okay, third most important thing. What the !@#$ is this, the Spanish Inquisition?)
Anyway, here's the score so far. Morocco no longer has a !@#$ing space program. Israel's HAGANAH owes Egypt's El Wedjat a big !@#$ favor because they're the ones who made that !@#$ing happen. By extension, NASA owes HAGANAH a favor, too, seeing as how the Israelis fixed it so their Space Shuttle didn't get !@#$ing preempted by a big !@#$ Nazi Silbervogel on a !@#$ing rocket sled.
(And yes, son, that's even though HAGANAH asked NASA to be the ones to do it, and they didn't. I told you this !@#$'s pretty complicated.)
Conversely? The Space Service is owed a little payback from HAGANAH for having !@#$ing flat-out refused to do any of it for strategic and ethical purposes. But, since the COMPANY never had time to properly !@#$ing refuse, we're still on HAGANAH's good list. Especially since HAGANAH was too !@#$ busy arguing with Molchanie to deal with something we were dealing with... and so on.
Plus, now I've got a piece of information I can use against el Wedjat, in case I need to blackmail them into !@#$ing doing something for me, someday. As I'm sure the Moroccans won't be !@#$ing happy to learn that their fellow North African, Muslim brother country !@#$ing sold them out to god!@#$ Israel all for the sake of the !@#$ing Camp David Accords.
Oh, this surprises you? Son, it shouldn't by now. We !@#$ing spy on our friends, they !@#$ing spy on us, and when we get a chance to get them to do something for us you bet your sweet, greenhorn !@#$ we bring up what we know.
Because you better !@#$ing believe they'll do the same.
So, all well and !@#$ing good. NASA's got a Space Shuttle, Israel owes Egypt a favor, Morocco has no !@#$ idea that they got !@#$ed over, and I got something I can use against Egypt if they ever !@#$ing get uppity with me. Life goes on, everybody happy, on to the next crisis. And the next. And the next.
But hey, son, you know how I always say that sometimes crises come in !@#$ing chapters? The next chapter in this crisis comes a few years later. 1984, I think. And by this time, the board's changed a little.
Anwar Sadat's !@#$ing dead. Israel and Egypt are still allies, but the leftover wedding cake's gotten a bit !@#$ing freezerburned. But at least HAGANAH and Molchanie aren't hating each other, anymore, because, since that science terrorist outfit was neutralized with extreme !@#$ing prejudice, ABWEHR is their big !@#$ primary threat once again.
Which is when Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir, would-be Moroccan astronaut, comes back to Earth -- alive and well and more than a little pissed off.
What happened, you may well !@#$ing ask? Well, that's a !@#$ good question, son, because no one has any idea what the !@#$ el Wedjat's high muckety-muck two-fisted pulp sorcerer !@#$ing did to that spacecraft. Not even the sorcerer, himself.
Oh, he claims he sent it through a gate into the !@#$ing sun. It's something one of the arch-magicians of the Upper Nile learned to do from those !@#$ aliens that were !@#$ing around in Egypt, back before the Pharaohs were a thing. It seems there were other aliens trying to get in on the !@#$ action, and these folks had a knack for !@#$ing zapping them while they were still in the upper atmosphere.
All well and good, son. But this was written down back in the time before people really kept good !@#$ing records. And this was the first !@#$ time in thousands of years that anyone had !@#$ing tried to fire that !@#$ing spell off.
So, needless to say, the guy got it a little !@#$ing wrong, and we really have no idea what the !@#$ happened.
Did Faraj get flung into some far !@#$ corner of the universe, where our physical laws don't mean jack or !@#$? Did he get hurled into an alternate dimension, or some parallel world? Did he wind up in the !@#$ing collective unconsciousness, or the god!@#$ Dreamlands? The future? The past? !@#$ing Hoboken on a really bad night?
Who can say? All we know is that the big !@#$ hole in reality that the sorcerer created when he made it look like the !@#$ing Silbervogel blew up was still there, !@#$ing keeping time with the !@#$ Sun. And occasionally some weird !@#$ would tumble out of it.
And every year, after that, when the Earth passed it by again, some of that weird !@#$ would tumble out on us.
Not anything really awful. Not at first, anyway. Space junk for the most part. Weird monster things that couldn't !@#$ing handle the vacuum. Ships that weren't made to handle entering our !@#$ atmosphere.
Even more dead spacecraft, floating in the black between worlds.
But then, five years after there's this !@#$ing boom directly over Morocco, and something that looks like a god!@#$ diving bell made out of ceramic plates the size of VW Bugs comes hurtling out of the !@#$ing sky, heading straight for Algeria. It smashes into a mountain range, and should !@#$ing make a crater the size of a city, but somehow it doesn't.
The !@#$ thing just melts, all the heat and kinetic energy it absorbed finally bleeding away.
Inside, wrapped in the arms of some gelatinous thing that looks like a jellyfish someone fed a !@#$ of a lot of steroids to, is capitaine Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. Only he's bigger and stronger, his hair's down to his !@#$ing knees, it's gone steel grey down to the roots.
And he's !@#$ing naked except for a pouched, black-leather belt, a black choker around his neck, a red shoulder cape, and a weapon that looks like a gun and a sword made sweet metal love one night and cranked it out a month or two later.
The jellyfish dissolves. He comes out, only slightly disoriented. The Algerian border patrol's not sure what to !@#$ing make of all this, but one of them looks hard at the guy's !@#$ face and realizes this is the Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. And they all start !@#$ing cheering, like it's Major !@#$ing Tom come home at last.
But then he ruins it all by telling them that Earth is in deadly danger, and, worse, tells them from what.
...
You see, son, there's only so much a person's mind can !@#$ing take in. It's kind of like your stomach, you know? You see a huge table of good food, and you start !@#$ing piling up your plate. But sooner or later you get full, and then if anyone tries to make you eat any more you'll throw the !@#$ up.
You've been there and done that, right? I know I sure as !@#$ have. Half the Chinese buffets in this town have orders to !@#$ing shoot me if I show up again.
(Especially on Christmas.)
Well, Faraj tried to tell them about where he'd been for the last fifty !@#$ing years. The massive sea in space he'd navigated. The island-planets where time stood !@#$ing still, or moved at different rates. The creatures and kingdoms between them all.
All the different places and people and things, all more amazing and terrible than anything we could !@#$ing imagine.
And the Endless Empire, made of people whose minds had been !@#$ing invaded by an intelligent virus with a group mind. A malevolent and cunning consciousness spread across trillions of !@#$ing beings, all over the place, all seeking to make his mind the only mind in all creation.
The Unseen Emperor and his Unknowing Armies, most of whom had no idea they'd been infected until he needed to turn them the !@#$ on...
He told them, Faraj did. He tried. But in spite of all the !@#$ they'd seen that night, they just couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that this man, who'd vanished just five or so years before, had aged 50 !@#$ing years in the meantime, even though he doesn't look a day over 30.
(That and he suggested they all have a hot, manly gang!@#$ while he was telling them the story, which didn't help matters at all.)
And so they thought he was !@#$ing nuts, and tried to club the !@#$ out of him. He responded in turn, but overestimated his own !@#$ing strength, killed three people before he realized what he was doing, and, horrified, ran like !@#$ for Morocco.
Of course, Morocco's happy to see him, again. They hail him as the prodigal son returned, and one they got over on the world. And there's talk of parades and parties and all that good !@#$.
But then, you guessed it, he starts !@#$#ing talking. He won't put !@#$ing clothes on. He won't go to mosque. He won't let go of his !@#$ sword. He won't stop trying to get !@#$ing laid.
And he won't stop !@#$ing telling anyone who will listen that the world is in big !@#$ deadly danger.
But you know, that last bit? He wouldn't be the first to come down from the !@#$ing mountain and warn people that Soylent Green is Charlton !@#$ing Heston. That they can deal with, usually.
It's everything else, son. It's the nudity and the !@#$ing. It's the fact that he isn't down with Islam, anymore. It's the horrible way he looks at people when they !@#$ing disappoint him, and that he has to be physically restrained from killing the stupid, the officious, and the !@#$ing useless.
How can I put this... tell me, son, when you were going to that awful, commie-run public school, did you have to read all of Gulliver's Travels? Not just the bit with the little !@#$ing people that's all that people tend to remember, but the whole !@#$ thing? The flying island, the trip to Japan, all that good !@#$?
Well, you remember when he goes to that island where the horses are the smart and beautiful ones, and the people are !@#$ing ugly and stupid? The Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos? And then he comes back to merry old England and he can't !@#$ing stand people, anymore, and just sits in the back of his estate talking to the !@#$ing horses?
And they think he's the crazy one?
That's the closest !@#$ thing I got for this one, son. Faraj was this fresh-faced, well-placed 25 year old kid with a lot of pluck, nationalism, and know-how when they put him into the Silbervogel and launched him up into the black. He then spent 50 !@#$ing years -- twice his age when he'd left -- living and loving and fighting alongside beings that make us look like plodding, grotesque idiots in comparison.
It took him forever to prove he was worthy of their company, and by then he'd changed so much that I'm not sure we can even call him !@#$ing human, anymore.
So he makes what's essentially a one-way journey back here to warn us that this Unseen Emperor wants the !@#$ earth, too. But Faraj has been gone so !@#$ long, and done so many amazing and crazy things, well, it's like zooming along at 100 MPH in the best sports car you can buy, and then having to slow it down to 10 when you aren't stuck in a tollway tailback a whole state long.
And you know how I feel about things like that.
So, what do you do with a crazy-sounding septuagenarian space warrior apostate with a taste for naked swordfighting and polysexuality? You toss his !@#$ in jail, obviously.
But how he got there, and who lost and profited from it? That's where this whole !@#$ favors thing comes back around on itself, son.
Eat your Moutabal. Drink your beer. This goes best on a full stomach.
(SPYGOD is listening to Contact (Daft Punk) and having some more Flag Speciale)
Yeah, good? Glad to hear it. I wasn't totally sure I still knew how to !@#$ing make it. The Lion taught me, a long time ago when we were still !@#$ing friends, and he was still alive...
...
Yeah, the trick's to get the !@#$ eggplant right under the !@#$ing broiler. You gotta char it just enough to get it smoky, but not so much you got a big !@#$ fire in your oven instead of mezze. That and some garlic, tahini paste, lemon juice, maybe some chopped parsley, too.
And I mean the real kind of !@#$ing parsley, son. Not that curly sprig !@#$ they put on your plate when you get a burger at !@#$ing Dennys. I mean the kind you buy by the pound at the !@#$ing supermarket and never quite use before it's gone brown and nasty in your !@#$ing veggie cabinet. That's the !@#$ you need, here. Chopped just enough to give it some !@#$ing texture.
Yeah, I learned a lot about Mediterranean cooking from the Lion. That man's wife could make a tabbouleh salad that'd make you run !@#$ing barefoot across the mountains to get to dinner on time.
Better days, those, son. Better days.
...
So, one big !@#$ cooking demonstration and ten !@#$ing Flag Speciales ago, we were talking about the big !@#$ magic of favors in the superspy game. Possibly the second most important thing you !@#$ing need to know, after how and when to !@#$ing blackmail someone, and to never !@#$ing pick a !@#$ fight unless you got a back-up plan that could get the Devil out of Hell.
(Well, okay, third most important thing. What the !@#$ is this, the Spanish Inquisition?)
Anyway, here's the score so far. Morocco no longer has a !@#$ing space program. Israel's HAGANAH owes Egypt's El Wedjat a big !@#$ favor because they're the ones who made that !@#$ing happen. By extension, NASA owes HAGANAH a favor, too, seeing as how the Israelis fixed it so their Space Shuttle didn't get !@#$ing preempted by a big !@#$ Nazi Silbervogel on a !@#$ing rocket sled.
(And yes, son, that's even though HAGANAH asked NASA to be the ones to do it, and they didn't. I told you this !@#$'s pretty complicated.)
Conversely? The Space Service is owed a little payback from HAGANAH for having !@#$ing flat-out refused to do any of it for strategic and ethical purposes. But, since the COMPANY never had time to properly !@#$ing refuse, we're still on HAGANAH's good list. Especially since HAGANAH was too !@#$ busy arguing with Molchanie to deal with something we were dealing with... and so on.
Plus, now I've got a piece of information I can use against el Wedjat, in case I need to blackmail them into !@#$ing doing something for me, someday. As I'm sure the Moroccans won't be !@#$ing happy to learn that their fellow North African, Muslim brother country !@#$ing sold them out to god!@#$ Israel all for the sake of the !@#$ing Camp David Accords.
Oh, this surprises you? Son, it shouldn't by now. We !@#$ing spy on our friends, they !@#$ing spy on us, and when we get a chance to get them to do something for us you bet your sweet, greenhorn !@#$ we bring up what we know.
Because you better !@#$ing believe they'll do the same.
So, all well and !@#$ing good. NASA's got a Space Shuttle, Israel owes Egypt a favor, Morocco has no !@#$ idea that they got !@#$ed over, and I got something I can use against Egypt if they ever !@#$ing get uppity with me. Life goes on, everybody happy, on to the next crisis. And the next. And the next.
But hey, son, you know how I always say that sometimes crises come in !@#$ing chapters? The next chapter in this crisis comes a few years later. 1984, I think. And by this time, the board's changed a little.
Anwar Sadat's !@#$ing dead. Israel and Egypt are still allies, but the leftover wedding cake's gotten a bit !@#$ing freezerburned. But at least HAGANAH and Molchanie aren't hating each other, anymore, because, since that science terrorist outfit was neutralized with extreme !@#$ing prejudice, ABWEHR is their big !@#$ primary threat once again.
Which is when Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir, would-be Moroccan astronaut, comes back to Earth -- alive and well and more than a little pissed off.
What happened, you may well !@#$ing ask? Well, that's a !@#$ good question, son, because no one has any idea what the !@#$ el Wedjat's high muckety-muck two-fisted pulp sorcerer !@#$ing did to that spacecraft. Not even the sorcerer, himself.
Oh, he claims he sent it through a gate into the !@#$ing sun. It's something one of the arch-magicians of the Upper Nile learned to do from those !@#$ aliens that were !@#$ing around in Egypt, back before the Pharaohs were a thing. It seems there were other aliens trying to get in on the !@#$ action, and these folks had a knack for !@#$ing zapping them while they were still in the upper atmosphere.
All well and good, son. But this was written down back in the time before people really kept good !@#$ing records. And this was the first !@#$ time in thousands of years that anyone had !@#$ing tried to fire that !@#$ing spell off.
So, needless to say, the guy got it a little !@#$ing wrong, and we really have no idea what the !@#$ happened.
Did Faraj get flung into some far !@#$ corner of the universe, where our physical laws don't mean jack or !@#$? Did he get hurled into an alternate dimension, or some parallel world? Did he wind up in the !@#$ing collective unconsciousness, or the god!@#$ Dreamlands? The future? The past? !@#$ing Hoboken on a really bad night?
Who can say? All we know is that the big !@#$ hole in reality that the sorcerer created when he made it look like the !@#$ing Silbervogel blew up was still there, !@#$ing keeping time with the !@#$ Sun. And occasionally some weird !@#$ would tumble out of it.
And every year, after that, when the Earth passed it by again, some of that weird !@#$ would tumble out on us.
Not anything really awful. Not at first, anyway. Space junk for the most part. Weird monster things that couldn't !@#$ing handle the vacuum. Ships that weren't made to handle entering our !@#$ atmosphere.
Even more dead spacecraft, floating in the black between worlds.
But then, five years after there's this !@#$ing boom directly over Morocco, and something that looks like a god!@#$ diving bell made out of ceramic plates the size of VW Bugs comes hurtling out of the !@#$ing sky, heading straight for Algeria. It smashes into a mountain range, and should !@#$ing make a crater the size of a city, but somehow it doesn't.
The !@#$ thing just melts, all the heat and kinetic energy it absorbed finally bleeding away.
Inside, wrapped in the arms of some gelatinous thing that looks like a jellyfish someone fed a !@#$ of a lot of steroids to, is capitaine Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. Only he's bigger and stronger, his hair's down to his !@#$ing knees, it's gone steel grey down to the roots.
And he's !@#$ing naked except for a pouched, black-leather belt, a black choker around his neck, a red shoulder cape, and a weapon that looks like a gun and a sword made sweet metal love one night and cranked it out a month or two later.
The jellyfish dissolves. He comes out, only slightly disoriented. The Algerian border patrol's not sure what to !@#$ing make of all this, but one of them looks hard at the guy's !@#$ face and realizes this is the Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. And they all start !@#$ing cheering, like it's Major !@#$ing Tom come home at last.
But then he ruins it all by telling them that Earth is in deadly danger, and, worse, tells them from what.
...
You see, son, there's only so much a person's mind can !@#$ing take in. It's kind of like your stomach, you know? You see a huge table of good food, and you start !@#$ing piling up your plate. But sooner or later you get full, and then if anyone tries to make you eat any more you'll throw the !@#$ up.
You've been there and done that, right? I know I sure as !@#$ have. Half the Chinese buffets in this town have orders to !@#$ing shoot me if I show up again.
(Especially on Christmas.)
Well, Faraj tried to tell them about where he'd been for the last fifty !@#$ing years. The massive sea in space he'd navigated. The island-planets where time stood !@#$ing still, or moved at different rates. The creatures and kingdoms between them all.
All the different places and people and things, all more amazing and terrible than anything we could !@#$ing imagine.
And the Endless Empire, made of people whose minds had been !@#$ing invaded by an intelligent virus with a group mind. A malevolent and cunning consciousness spread across trillions of !@#$ing beings, all over the place, all seeking to make his mind the only mind in all creation.
The Unseen Emperor and his Unknowing Armies, most of whom had no idea they'd been infected until he needed to turn them the !@#$ on...
He told them, Faraj did. He tried. But in spite of all the !@#$ they'd seen that night, they just couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that this man, who'd vanished just five or so years before, had aged 50 !@#$ing years in the meantime, even though he doesn't look a day over 30.
(That and he suggested they all have a hot, manly gang!@#$ while he was telling them the story, which didn't help matters at all.)
And so they thought he was !@#$ing nuts, and tried to club the !@#$ out of him. He responded in turn, but overestimated his own !@#$ing strength, killed three people before he realized what he was doing, and, horrified, ran like !@#$ for Morocco.
Of course, Morocco's happy to see him, again. They hail him as the prodigal son returned, and one they got over on the world. And there's talk of parades and parties and all that good !@#$.
But then, you guessed it, he starts !@#$#ing talking. He won't put !@#$ing clothes on. He won't go to mosque. He won't let go of his !@#$ sword. He won't stop trying to get !@#$ing laid.
And he won't stop !@#$ing telling anyone who will listen that the world is in big !@#$ deadly danger.
But you know, that last bit? He wouldn't be the first to come down from the !@#$ing mountain and warn people that Soylent Green is Charlton !@#$ing Heston. That they can deal with, usually.
It's everything else, son. It's the nudity and the !@#$ing. It's the fact that he isn't down with Islam, anymore. It's the horrible way he looks at people when they !@#$ing disappoint him, and that he has to be physically restrained from killing the stupid, the officious, and the !@#$ing useless.
How can I put this... tell me, son, when you were going to that awful, commie-run public school, did you have to read all of Gulliver's Travels? Not just the bit with the little !@#$ing people that's all that people tend to remember, but the whole !@#$ thing? The flying island, the trip to Japan, all that good !@#$?
Well, you remember when he goes to that island where the horses are the smart and beautiful ones, and the people are !@#$ing ugly and stupid? The Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos? And then he comes back to merry old England and he can't !@#$ing stand people, anymore, and just sits in the back of his estate talking to the !@#$ing horses?
And they think he's the crazy one?
That's the closest !@#$ thing I got for this one, son. Faraj was this fresh-faced, well-placed 25 year old kid with a lot of pluck, nationalism, and know-how when they put him into the Silbervogel and launched him up into the black. He then spent 50 !@#$ing years -- twice his age when he'd left -- living and loving and fighting alongside beings that make us look like plodding, grotesque idiots in comparison.
It took him forever to prove he was worthy of their company, and by then he'd changed so much that I'm not sure we can even call him !@#$ing human, anymore.
So he makes what's essentially a one-way journey back here to warn us that this Unseen Emperor wants the !@#$ earth, too. But Faraj has been gone so !@#$ long, and done so many amazing and crazy things, well, it's like zooming along at 100 MPH in the best sports car you can buy, and then having to slow it down to 10 when you aren't stuck in a tollway tailback a whole state long.
And you know how I feel about things like that.
So, what do you do with a crazy-sounding septuagenarian space warrior apostate with a taste for naked swordfighting and polysexuality? You toss his !@#$ in jail, obviously.
But how he got there, and who lost and profited from it? That's where this whole !@#$ favors thing comes back around on itself, son.
Eat your Moutabal. Drink your beer. This goes best on a full stomach.
(SPYGOD is listening to Contact (Daft Punk) and having some more Flag Speciale)
Thursday, May 22, 2014
1/4/13 - Lone Rangers and Strangers - Pt 1
So, we were talking about how the spy game actually !@#$ing works, the other day. And I told you about having things on people, and !@#$ like that.
You remember that, son? Or are you still scared some dog!@#$ing punk with no brain, a !@#$ longer than his arm, and more guns that Al !@#$ing Capone is going to hunt you down, eat your skin, and bang your skull because you got hold of his sister's favorite marble?
Well, put that fear aside, son. Bloody Dogkill street's long-since gentrified. Now you're in more danger of being hit up by yuppies selling Civet Cat coffee than what used to go on in that place.
(Or maybe it's gotten worse. Ever tried that cat butt stuff? I'm still tasting it, years and years and ten million beers later.)
Anyway. That !@#$ about the fine art of blackmail, threats, and cooperation? That's only half the story, son. Because while it's one thing to have something on someone, you can't !@#$ing blackmail your allies into doing what you want if you actually want them to be !@#$ing allies, as opposed to people who will turn around and !@#$ you in the back with a very large knife the first chance they get.
No, son. For that, you need something different. You need favors.
Yes, son. Favors. As in "Do this for me and I owe you one." Or "I will do this for you, but I'll ask for something in return, someday."
Or, even more rarely, "Now we're even."
It's a dangerous game. You need a lot of memory and a !@#$ good sense of bargaining. But if you can keep it all down in your little black book, you'll be ahead of the game.
Especially when you can combine favors and threats into one tasty package...
Now, you got all that? I mean, I know it's a lot to !@#$ing take in, son, but what do you expect? There's a reason us superspies make the big !@#$ bucks. Or get to !@#$ing steal them, anyway.
(But that's another big !@#$ story for another day...)
So let me give you a perfect !@#$ing example of how this all !@#$ing works. And that would be the tragicomic tale of one Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. Would-be Moroccan astronaut, accidental interplanetary revolutionary, space pirate of the Viridian Sea, the greatest nemesis of the Emperor, the current head of our new Space Service.
And the last man in the Solar System you want to !@#$ with, after yours truly.
How he got to be where he was, and is now, is a quiet little story with loud !@#$ing consequences. It also perfectly illustrates what a massive cluster!@#$ the international superspy game can be.
It all starts in the mid-60s, when our friends in ABWEHR decided to hook up with people who !@#$ing hated Jews as much as they did. This meant making some inroads with various governments in Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, and some of those folks were !@#$ing stupid enough to bite.
Now, some of these relationships would never quite get off the !@#$ ground, thanks to Israel finding out and kicking !@#$. And some would eventually have severe !@#$ing ramifications, especially in Libya, and some eventually bled into things like the Yom Kippur War.
But some of them went right the !@#$ under the table, because, to those countries' credit, they decided to take what their new Nazi !@#$buddies had given them and did not advertise it, nor get really deeply involved with any heavy !@#$ that came after.
That's what happened in !@#$ing Morocco, for example. In the 50's and 60's, they were buddies with the !@#$ing Soviet Union, mostly because everyone else was. After that, they kind of swung our way, if only because they wanted better trade partners, not to mention better !@#$ing weapons.
But, all along, they maintained a number of alliances with creepy !@#$holes, if only because it worked out to their benefit, and it made them a lot of !@#$ing money. And when they got caught, they could always claim they were shocked, shocked to find out that super villain bull!@#$ was going on in their country.
(You do know Casablanca's in Morocco, right? Just making sure, son.)
So, one of the wedding presents that Morocco kept, post-divorce with ABWEHR, was the functioning start of an actual, for-!@#$-real, !@#$ing space program.
No, really. I'm sure you knew that some of those mother!@#$ing Nazi scientists had some amazing !@#$ ideas on getting into orbit, and beyond. But you may not have known that not all of those folks got snapped up by Operation Paperclip, grabbed by the !@#$ Soviets, or shot in the back of the !@#$ head at the end of the War. Some of them actually made it out with ABWEHR, and their researches continued, just along slightly different lines.
Well, the Moroccans wanted to go into !@#$ing space. And if they'd managed to make it work, using ABWEHR's tech, they'd have cleaned up pretty !@#$ well. Especially if the Silbervogel spaceplane worked as advertised, and they could deploy a payload during the flight.
Oh, that surprises you? You think that NASA, the ESA, and the Soviets were the only major players in the outer space game? Think the !@#$ again, son. There were bunches of folks trying their hand at the table. It's just that we were the only ones who had any real !@#$ success, for one reason or another.
I mean, !@#$, son. You know about the Space Race. You know about the probes, the satellites. The Moon Landings. Alpha Base Seven. You even know about Deep Ten, rest its massive soul.
But there's tons of !@#$ you never !@#$ing heard about. Big !@#$ science that was not done by governments with rational, well-funded research divisions. Reckless experiments by high-science weirdos, all tweaking the !@#$ boundaries of the possible and impossible.
And occasionally they'd find some gold, up there in the black, but more often than not they just crashed and burned.
I mean, you think the early American space program had some really big !@#$-ups during the testing stages? You should have seen some of those poor fools who thought they could fly to Mars or beyond on a literal wing and a !@#$ prayer. There's !@#$ing dozens of dead spaceships floating between here and the outer and inner planets. Silent eternal graveyards in space, their crew flash frozen in the moments between life and death when something went horribly wrong.
Or worse. Much worse.
So just imagine, son. Imagine a reusable spaceplane that was actually based on sound, scientific principles. Imagine it being accelerated up to speed by a rocket sled, and then using its own engine to get up into the deep blue sky. Imagine it skipping across the atmosphere, tossing a satellite up, and then coming back down half the !@#$ world away.
Imagine us having that kind of technology in the !@#$ing mid-70's, instead of having to go through that sorry, expensive farce with the !@#$ing Space Shuttle for all those !@#$ years.
Well, that's all well and good. But come the late 70's, when Morocco managed to put all the !@#$ pieces together, no one was really wanting to see them come out on top. Especially not Israel, considering that Morocco had helped out during the Yom Kippur War.
So, as soon as Israel realized that this country was about to beat it to the stars, not to mention beat America to having a reusable suborbital spaceplace, they decided to !@#$ing do something about it.
But here's the problem. Israel could do a lot with what it had. Unfortunately, it needed to do it quietly, so as to make whatever it did look like a massive !@#$ing accident. The kind of mishap that sets a space program back years, if not decades.
So sending Supers over to smash the Silvervogel? Not going to !@#$ing happen. And they can't sabotage it on the ground, thanks to some talents the Moroccans had watching over the program. And they can't blast it out of the !@#$ air on the way up or someone might !@#$ing see.
No, son. In order for this !@#$ to work they needed to blast the !@#$ing silver bird out of existence while it was out of our atmosphere, and skipping along to its destination.
Now, Israel does not a !@#$ing space program. However, it has understandings with various organizations that do. It's got us, of course. And it's got the !@#$ing Space Service, which is mostly us. And it's got the COMPANY, too, and MI-10, Direction Noir, and anyone else involved in the !@#$ ESA.
Now, the ESA people all beg off, mostly because they want to see this !@#$ thing work and buy the tech, so as to steal a march from NASA, which is still having a problem getting it's !@#$ing Space Shuttle off the ground. NASA's keen to stamp on this !@#$, too, but they're not going to make a !@#$ recommendation until they see which way the Space Service is going to !@#$ing jump.
But the Space Service? Get this, son. They say no.
Why? Well, I doubt it's because they wanted to take the high road (stop laughing) but they do say that, if they started shooting at !@#$ing humans, instead of alien invaders, no one would ever be able to !@#$ing trust them again. That and they did not want others to learn what kind of weapons capability they ahd.
And they were !@#$ right to be leery of that, as we've since learned.
Now, that leaves the COMPANY. And, given a chance to stomp Supernazi !@#$, however removed, you know I'm going to leap at that !@#$. Normally.
But here's the thing, son. At the time, the COMPANY was in a bit of a !@#$ing match with Israel over turf. Israel's two major spy organizations, HAGANAH and Molchanie, were at cross purposes over what to do with a certain other science criminal organization. And while we really could have just !@#$ing settled the matter over a few drinks and a good argument, the two groups were not wanting to talk to each other, but rather around each other, using the COMPANY as a go-between.
So I was pretty !@#$ing sick of them, by then, and decided to try and use the issue as a big !@#$ bargaining chip to get to the table. And I figured it'd work, right? I mean, it wasn't like they were going to go to the !@#$ing Soviets, were they?
(And, yes, they did. But the Soviets told them to suck it up, too. Go figure.)
Well, they drag their !@#$ feet, and eventually stop calling me. So I figure they're playing hard to !@#$ing get. And the time to the launch gets closer and closer, and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to kick !@#$ all by myself.
However, the Moroccans get wind that something's !@#$ing up, somehow. And they bring the launch forward a whole !@#$ week, which if you know !@#$ing anything about space travel is just !@#$ing unheard of.
At or around 6 in the AM, local time, they strap Captaine Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir into the cockpit of the Silbervogel. The preflight checks are rushed though as quickly as possible, the area cleared by force and fire. He waves once and smiles, saying that he's as ready as he's ever going to be, and all systems are go, go, go.
So they hit the big !@#$ red button, and the rocket sled takes off. They travel at ridiculous !@#$ speeds until they get just below where they need to be !@#$ing going. And then Faraj somehow presses the !@#$ button to activate the ship's own rocket engine. There's a burst of white-hot fire, and the ship flies off the sled, nearly straight up into the atmosphere.
It goes up, up, up. Faster and faster. The light blue of the desert sky turns into indigo, and then into black, and Faraj becomes the first Moroccan to see the stars from outside the atmosphere.
Only then, something goes terribly wrong. There's a flash of light, brighter than the Sun. A ring of fire floats in the upper atmosphere, just about where the Silbervogel would have been.
And, so far as anyone knows, the ship is lost, and Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. is dead.
What happened? Well, son, you remember me telling you about el Wedjat? The Mukhabarat's occult secret police? The kind of people you call when the !@#$ing Sphinx wakes the !@#$ up and starts munching down tourists?
Well, remember this was just after the Camp David Accords, son. This was when, after years of being !@#$ing enemies, Israel and Egypt were going to try being peaceful neighbors, again. And that opened a number of diplomatic options back up, not to mention a few back-channels.
So yeah. When we were stalling, and they couldn't !@#$ing agree, HAGANAH got in touch with el Wedjat. They explained the situation, and their people agreed that they didn't want any !@#$ing supernazi tech in space.
Plus, getting one over on a former partner in the Yom Kippur War would make certain there was no question that Egypt was now on the side of the angels.
So they had one of their more powerful ceremonial magicians do... something. !@#$ if I ever knew what, or ever will. All that we know is that it was supposed to make it look like the ship blew the !@#$ up at the most critical point in the mission, setting the Moroccan space program back enough to give NASA the breathing room it needed to make the Space Shuttle a reality, and everyone else enough time to deal with the ramifications of what just almost !@#$ing happened.
And it worked, but not without consequences far beyond what they !@#$ing thought...
Yeah, more on this later. I need another !@#$ing beer, and you look like you've had your mind blown enough tonight.
Because if that was some crazy and complicated !@#$, what happened next is going to turn your brains to Moutabal. And !@#$ am I hungry for some of that stuff, right about now.
(Unfortunately, we can't order out, anymore.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Silver Bird (Mark Lindsay) and having a Flag Speciale)
You remember that, son? Or are you still scared some dog!@#$ing punk with no brain, a !@#$ longer than his arm, and more guns that Al !@#$ing Capone is going to hunt you down, eat your skin, and bang your skull because you got hold of his sister's favorite marble?
Well, put that fear aside, son. Bloody Dogkill street's long-since gentrified. Now you're in more danger of being hit up by yuppies selling Civet Cat coffee than what used to go on in that place.
(Or maybe it's gotten worse. Ever tried that cat butt stuff? I'm still tasting it, years and years and ten million beers later.)
Anyway. That !@#$ about the fine art of blackmail, threats, and cooperation? That's only half the story, son. Because while it's one thing to have something on someone, you can't !@#$ing blackmail your allies into doing what you want if you actually want them to be !@#$ing allies, as opposed to people who will turn around and !@#$ you in the back with a very large knife the first chance they get.
No, son. For that, you need something different. You need favors.
Yes, son. Favors. As in "Do this for me and I owe you one." Or "I will do this for you, but I'll ask for something in return, someday."
Or, even more rarely, "Now we're even."
It's a dangerous game. You need a lot of memory and a !@#$ good sense of bargaining. But if you can keep it all down in your little black book, you'll be ahead of the game.
Especially when you can combine favors and threats into one tasty package...
Now, you got all that? I mean, I know it's a lot to !@#$ing take in, son, but what do you expect? There's a reason us superspies make the big !@#$ bucks. Or get to !@#$ing steal them, anyway.
(But that's another big !@#$ story for another day...)
So let me give you a perfect !@#$ing example of how this all !@#$ing works. And that would be the tragicomic tale of one Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. Would-be Moroccan astronaut, accidental interplanetary revolutionary, space pirate of the Viridian Sea, the greatest nemesis of the Emperor, the current head of our new Space Service.
And the last man in the Solar System you want to !@#$ with, after yours truly.
How he got to be where he was, and is now, is a quiet little story with loud !@#$ing consequences. It also perfectly illustrates what a massive cluster!@#$ the international superspy game can be.
It all starts in the mid-60s, when our friends in ABWEHR decided to hook up with people who !@#$ing hated Jews as much as they did. This meant making some inroads with various governments in Asia, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, and some of those folks were !@#$ing stupid enough to bite.
Now, some of these relationships would never quite get off the !@#$ ground, thanks to Israel finding out and kicking !@#$. And some would eventually have severe !@#$ing ramifications, especially in Libya, and some eventually bled into things like the Yom Kippur War.
But some of them went right the !@#$ under the table, because, to those countries' credit, they decided to take what their new Nazi !@#$buddies had given them and did not advertise it, nor get really deeply involved with any heavy !@#$ that came after.
That's what happened in !@#$ing Morocco, for example. In the 50's and 60's, they were buddies with the !@#$ing Soviet Union, mostly because everyone else was. After that, they kind of swung our way, if only because they wanted better trade partners, not to mention better !@#$ing weapons.
But, all along, they maintained a number of alliances with creepy !@#$holes, if only because it worked out to their benefit, and it made them a lot of !@#$ing money. And when they got caught, they could always claim they were shocked, shocked to find out that super villain bull!@#$ was going on in their country.
(You do know Casablanca's in Morocco, right? Just making sure, son.)
So, one of the wedding presents that Morocco kept, post-divorce with ABWEHR, was the functioning start of an actual, for-!@#$-real, !@#$ing space program.
No, really. I'm sure you knew that some of those mother!@#$ing Nazi scientists had some amazing !@#$ ideas on getting into orbit, and beyond. But you may not have known that not all of those folks got snapped up by Operation Paperclip, grabbed by the !@#$ Soviets, or shot in the back of the !@#$ head at the end of the War. Some of them actually made it out with ABWEHR, and their researches continued, just along slightly different lines.
Well, the Moroccans wanted to go into !@#$ing space. And if they'd managed to make it work, using ABWEHR's tech, they'd have cleaned up pretty !@#$ well. Especially if the Silbervogel spaceplane worked as advertised, and they could deploy a payload during the flight.
Oh, that surprises you? You think that NASA, the ESA, and the Soviets were the only major players in the outer space game? Think the !@#$ again, son. There were bunches of folks trying their hand at the table. It's just that we were the only ones who had any real !@#$ success, for one reason or another.
I mean, !@#$, son. You know about the Space Race. You know about the probes, the satellites. The Moon Landings. Alpha Base Seven. You even know about Deep Ten, rest its massive soul.
But there's tons of !@#$ you never !@#$ing heard about. Big !@#$ science that was not done by governments with rational, well-funded research divisions. Reckless experiments by high-science weirdos, all tweaking the !@#$ boundaries of the possible and impossible.
And occasionally they'd find some gold, up there in the black, but more often than not they just crashed and burned.
I mean, you think the early American space program had some really big !@#$-ups during the testing stages? You should have seen some of those poor fools who thought they could fly to Mars or beyond on a literal wing and a !@#$ prayer. There's !@#$ing dozens of dead spaceships floating between here and the outer and inner planets. Silent eternal graveyards in space, their crew flash frozen in the moments between life and death when something went horribly wrong.
Or worse. Much worse.
So just imagine, son. Imagine a reusable spaceplane that was actually based on sound, scientific principles. Imagine it being accelerated up to speed by a rocket sled, and then using its own engine to get up into the deep blue sky. Imagine it skipping across the atmosphere, tossing a satellite up, and then coming back down half the !@#$ world away.
Imagine us having that kind of technology in the !@#$ing mid-70's, instead of having to go through that sorry, expensive farce with the !@#$ing Space Shuttle for all those !@#$ years.
Well, that's all well and good. But come the late 70's, when Morocco managed to put all the !@#$ pieces together, no one was really wanting to see them come out on top. Especially not Israel, considering that Morocco had helped out during the Yom Kippur War.
So, as soon as Israel realized that this country was about to beat it to the stars, not to mention beat America to having a reusable suborbital spaceplace, they decided to !@#$ing do something about it.
But here's the problem. Israel could do a lot with what it had. Unfortunately, it needed to do it quietly, so as to make whatever it did look like a massive !@#$ing accident. The kind of mishap that sets a space program back years, if not decades.
So sending Supers over to smash the Silvervogel? Not going to !@#$ing happen. And they can't sabotage it on the ground, thanks to some talents the Moroccans had watching over the program. And they can't blast it out of the !@#$ air on the way up or someone might !@#$ing see.
No, son. In order for this !@#$ to work they needed to blast the !@#$ing silver bird out of existence while it was out of our atmosphere, and skipping along to its destination.
Now, Israel does not a !@#$ing space program. However, it has understandings with various organizations that do. It's got us, of course. And it's got the !@#$ing Space Service, which is mostly us. And it's got the COMPANY, too, and MI-10, Direction Noir, and anyone else involved in the !@#$ ESA.
Now, the ESA people all beg off, mostly because they want to see this !@#$ thing work and buy the tech, so as to steal a march from NASA, which is still having a problem getting it's !@#$ing Space Shuttle off the ground. NASA's keen to stamp on this !@#$, too, but they're not going to make a !@#$ recommendation until they see which way the Space Service is going to !@#$ing jump.
But the Space Service? Get this, son. They say no.
Why? Well, I doubt it's because they wanted to take the high road (stop laughing) but they do say that, if they started shooting at !@#$ing humans, instead of alien invaders, no one would ever be able to !@#$ing trust them again. That and they did not want others to learn what kind of weapons capability they ahd.
And they were !@#$ right to be leery of that, as we've since learned.
Now, that leaves the COMPANY. And, given a chance to stomp Supernazi !@#$, however removed, you know I'm going to leap at that !@#$. Normally.
But here's the thing, son. At the time, the COMPANY was in a bit of a !@#$ing match with Israel over turf. Israel's two major spy organizations, HAGANAH and Molchanie, were at cross purposes over what to do with a certain other science criminal organization. And while we really could have just !@#$ing settled the matter over a few drinks and a good argument, the two groups were not wanting to talk to each other, but rather around each other, using the COMPANY as a go-between.
So I was pretty !@#$ing sick of them, by then, and decided to try and use the issue as a big !@#$ bargaining chip to get to the table. And I figured it'd work, right? I mean, it wasn't like they were going to go to the !@#$ing Soviets, were they?
(And, yes, they did. But the Soviets told them to suck it up, too. Go figure.)
Well, they drag their !@#$ feet, and eventually stop calling me. So I figure they're playing hard to !@#$ing get. And the time to the launch gets closer and closer, and I'm wondering if I'm going to have to kick !@#$ all by myself.
However, the Moroccans get wind that something's !@#$ing up, somehow. And they bring the launch forward a whole !@#$ week, which if you know !@#$ing anything about space travel is just !@#$ing unheard of.
At or around 6 in the AM, local time, they strap Captaine Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir into the cockpit of the Silbervogel. The preflight checks are rushed though as quickly as possible, the area cleared by force and fire. He waves once and smiles, saying that he's as ready as he's ever going to be, and all systems are go, go, go.
So they hit the big !@#$ red button, and the rocket sled takes off. They travel at ridiculous !@#$ speeds until they get just below where they need to be !@#$ing going. And then Faraj somehow presses the !@#$ button to activate the ship's own rocket engine. There's a burst of white-hot fire, and the ship flies off the sled, nearly straight up into the atmosphere.
It goes up, up, up. Faster and faster. The light blue of the desert sky turns into indigo, and then into black, and Faraj becomes the first Moroccan to see the stars from outside the atmosphere.
Only then, something goes terribly wrong. There's a flash of light, brighter than the Sun. A ring of fire floats in the upper atmosphere, just about where the Silbervogel would have been.
And, so far as anyone knows, the ship is lost, and Faraj al-Ǧazāʼir. is dead.
What happened? Well, son, you remember me telling you about el Wedjat? The Mukhabarat's occult secret police? The kind of people you call when the !@#$ing Sphinx wakes the !@#$ up and starts munching down tourists?
Well, remember this was just after the Camp David Accords, son. This was when, after years of being !@#$ing enemies, Israel and Egypt were going to try being peaceful neighbors, again. And that opened a number of diplomatic options back up, not to mention a few back-channels.
So yeah. When we were stalling, and they couldn't !@#$ing agree, HAGANAH got in touch with el Wedjat. They explained the situation, and their people agreed that they didn't want any !@#$ing supernazi tech in space.
Plus, getting one over on a former partner in the Yom Kippur War would make certain there was no question that Egypt was now on the side of the angels.
So they had one of their more powerful ceremonial magicians do... something. !@#$ if I ever knew what, or ever will. All that we know is that it was supposed to make it look like the ship blew the !@#$ up at the most critical point in the mission, setting the Moroccan space program back enough to give NASA the breathing room it needed to make the Space Shuttle a reality, and everyone else enough time to deal with the ramifications of what just almost !@#$ing happened.
And it worked, but not without consequences far beyond what they !@#$ing thought...
Yeah, more on this later. I need another !@#$ing beer, and you look like you've had your mind blown enough tonight.
Because if that was some crazy and complicated !@#$, what happened next is going to turn your brains to Moutabal. And !@#$ am I hungry for some of that stuff, right about now.
(Unfortunately, we can't order out, anymore.)
(SPYGOD is listening to Silver Bird (Mark Lindsay) and having a Flag Speciale)
Thursday, August 11, 2011
8/10/11 - HONEYCOMB pt.2 - White Angels, Black Science
There's actually some people out there who have good things to say about Dr. Josef Mengele. "Oh, he was just a man in a bad time." "He did good work in a bad way." "If you'd been there, you'd understand."
There's a word for these kinds of people: Nazi Sympathizing !@#$nozzles.
Well, okay, that's three words. But if we did it in German we could probably mash it down into one. German's good for that sort of thing.
German's also good for coming up with all kinds of sick rationalizations for inhuman medical testing, for which the name "Mengele," the "White Angel" of Auschwitz, is almost synonymous.
If you don't know why by now, then you missed a very important chapter in the history of the War. If certain accidents of fate hadn't kept him on a different front, he probably would have been in Berlin for the Night of the Black Pill, and a part of ABWEHR. As it was, he ducked out of the Third Reich as quickly as his cowardly legs would take him, set up shop in South America on the ODESSA bill, and apparently avoided mingling for too long with his former colleagues when they came around for help.
No honor amongst thieves? Maybe. Or maybe he had a good thing going as "Jose" and didn't want to get tarred by exposure to his old atrocity buddies, which probably rankled them to no end.
(Which is why they say he was probably murdered in 1979, and not merely a drowning victim. Either that or HAGANAH got him, which suits me just fine. More on them another time, though.)
But as twisted and morally bankrupt as that twin-vivisecting, no-anesthetic, life-or-death deciding, genocidal !@#$ was, he didn't spontaneously combust with evil one day out of the blue while eating schnitzel and reading the paper. He had help.
Help for Mengele, as near as we can tell, came from a man who's been largely forgotten by history. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. Let's call him Dr. V for short.
Dr. V was what you might call an interesting character. It was his own research into twins that lit the fascination fire under Mengele's sick !@#$, and the Third Reich just gave him the ability to get away with things that no scientist ever should. Like collecting the off-color eyes of twins who came through the camps, and sending them off to Berlin for further study.
Yes, son, you read that right. They took their !@#$ eyes right out of their skulls on arrival. Then they send them off to the gas chambers, still bleeding and in shock from the surgery. They were sat down on the filthy floor, told "wait here," as if help was on the way, and then locked in so the Zyklon-B could do its work.
The one who told them "Wait here" was another interesting case. Mengele is often called the Angel of Death, as he was the one who got to decide who lived or died when they got off the trains. But he was also called the White Angel, as he'd stand there in his white coat in a sea of black, dark gray, and brown, illuminated by chance rays of light poking out between the smoke and the gloom.
And he was not the only White Angel there, at Auschwitz. There was another.
She was Dr. V's favorite, apparently. Also his lover, or so they say. She might have had it off with Mengele between atrocities, too, for all we know. Or maybe her !@#$ was as cold as ice and she got off on the whole tease-und-deny thing.
(There was a lot of that going around. Ask Ilsa, if you can find her.)
Who was this darling angel in white? Who helped decide if people lived or died? Who held down twins with unusual eyes for the removal process, and assisted with other gruesome medical procedures that ended in death, dismemberment, mutilation, or a lifetime of nightmares for the rare survivors?
That would be Gerde Hoffstatler. Twin sister of Gertrude Hoffstatler, now Dr. Geri Yesterday. She of the 3.5 Einstein units, and the real brains of the Yesterday family.
She was just 25 in 1944, when Dr. V went to Auschwitz and rejoined his former student at the front lines of evil experimentation on the Reich's victims. 25 years old and already the most evil little !@#$ you ever met.
But maybe she was doomed from the beginning.
You see, when Getrude and Gerde were born, back in 1919, it was quite a showstopper. They were conjoined along the back, one head up and one down. The lucky thing was that they hadn't been born with shared organs or a fused spinal column. Luckier still that the doctor in their small town had the sense to ring up what was left of Berlin after the war and get someone who knew what the !@#$ they were doing to separate them.
That doctor brought along a bright-eyed, young assistant to assist and observe. That fellow was, of course, Dr. V. And he took one look at Gerde and, slicing her away from her sister, decided he'd keep an eye on this one.
Bad seed? Stockholm Syndrome? Pygmalion? Call it what you will. Gertrude applied her 3.5 into hard physical sciences and, in spite of working for the wrong team during the war, turned out alright for a Nazi rocket scientist with a knack for extraterrestrial technology.
Gerde? Well, you can guess what happened. An unseen hand guided her late adolescence and early adulthood. Doors opened up for her in prestigious medical schools, in spite of her gender, and she got all the hands-on she wanted. Opportunities wash over her like a maelstrom and she stands there, smiling wide, the better to take it in as gray science turns black, and then red.
Then out walks Dr. V, smiling and evil. "I have such sights to show you, my child," he purrs. She takes his hand, and then it's on to Auschwitz.
After the war, Dr. V got away pretty much scot-free. A surprising lack of evidence (no eyes means no witnesses) meant that they could only charge him with being a "fellow traveler," fine him 600 Marks and send him on his way. He got denied some things, sure, but once everyone got sick of dealing with each other's past they eventually let him return to prominence as a genetic researcher at U of Munster.
Shame about the automobile accident in 69, though. They say he just lost control of the vehicle. And the strange thing was that, when they pulled him from the wreck, his eyes were missing.
(That was HAGANAH, incidentally. Do not !@#$ with Israel's strategic talents. ABWEHR found that out the hard way a few times.)
But Gerde? She vanished after the war, just like an angel after the miracle's been seen and remarked upon.
Geri never tried to look for her. As far as she was concerned, she hadn't had a sister since they were in their teens. She once told me she'd hoped she'd been killed during the fighting, which was a terrible thing to say, but her sister was more terrible still.
Terrible indeed.
(SPYGOD is listening to Fly on the Windscreen {final} (Depeche Mode) and having some Chateau Adolf)
There's a word for these kinds of people: Nazi Sympathizing !@#$nozzles.
Well, okay, that's three words. But if we did it in German we could probably mash it down into one. German's good for that sort of thing.
German's also good for coming up with all kinds of sick rationalizations for inhuman medical testing, for which the name "Mengele," the "White Angel" of Auschwitz, is almost synonymous.
If you don't know why by now, then you missed a very important chapter in the history of the War. If certain accidents of fate hadn't kept him on a different front, he probably would have been in Berlin for the Night of the Black Pill, and a part of ABWEHR. As it was, he ducked out of the Third Reich as quickly as his cowardly legs would take him, set up shop in South America on the ODESSA bill, and apparently avoided mingling for too long with his former colleagues when they came around for help.
No honor amongst thieves? Maybe. Or maybe he had a good thing going as "Jose" and didn't want to get tarred by exposure to his old atrocity buddies, which probably rankled them to no end.
(Which is why they say he was probably murdered in 1979, and not merely a drowning victim. Either that or HAGANAH got him, which suits me just fine. More on them another time, though.)
But as twisted and morally bankrupt as that twin-vivisecting, no-anesthetic, life-or-death deciding, genocidal !@#$ was, he didn't spontaneously combust with evil one day out of the blue while eating schnitzel and reading the paper. He had help.
Help for Mengele, as near as we can tell, came from a man who's been largely forgotten by history. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer. Let's call him Dr. V for short.
Dr. V was what you might call an interesting character. It was his own research into twins that lit the fascination fire under Mengele's sick !@#$, and the Third Reich just gave him the ability to get away with things that no scientist ever should. Like collecting the off-color eyes of twins who came through the camps, and sending them off to Berlin for further study.
Yes, son, you read that right. They took their !@#$ eyes right out of their skulls on arrival. Then they send them off to the gas chambers, still bleeding and in shock from the surgery. They were sat down on the filthy floor, told "wait here," as if help was on the way, and then locked in so the Zyklon-B could do its work.
The one who told them "Wait here" was another interesting case. Mengele is often called the Angel of Death, as he was the one who got to decide who lived or died when they got off the trains. But he was also called the White Angel, as he'd stand there in his white coat in a sea of black, dark gray, and brown, illuminated by chance rays of light poking out between the smoke and the gloom.
And he was not the only White Angel there, at Auschwitz. There was another.
She was Dr. V's favorite, apparently. Also his lover, or so they say. She might have had it off with Mengele between atrocities, too, for all we know. Or maybe her !@#$ was as cold as ice and she got off on the whole tease-und-deny thing.
(There was a lot of that going around. Ask Ilsa, if you can find her.)
Who was this darling angel in white? Who helped decide if people lived or died? Who held down twins with unusual eyes for the removal process, and assisted with other gruesome medical procedures that ended in death, dismemberment, mutilation, or a lifetime of nightmares for the rare survivors?
That would be Gerde Hoffstatler. Twin sister of Gertrude Hoffstatler, now Dr. Geri Yesterday. She of the 3.5 Einstein units, and the real brains of the Yesterday family.
She was just 25 in 1944, when Dr. V went to Auschwitz and rejoined his former student at the front lines of evil experimentation on the Reich's victims. 25 years old and already the most evil little !@#$ you ever met.
But maybe she was doomed from the beginning.
You see, when Getrude and Gerde were born, back in 1919, it was quite a showstopper. They were conjoined along the back, one head up and one down. The lucky thing was that they hadn't been born with shared organs or a fused spinal column. Luckier still that the doctor in their small town had the sense to ring up what was left of Berlin after the war and get someone who knew what the !@#$ they were doing to separate them.
That doctor brought along a bright-eyed, young assistant to assist and observe. That fellow was, of course, Dr. V. And he took one look at Gerde and, slicing her away from her sister, decided he'd keep an eye on this one.
Bad seed? Stockholm Syndrome? Pygmalion? Call it what you will. Gertrude applied her 3.5 into hard physical sciences and, in spite of working for the wrong team during the war, turned out alright for a Nazi rocket scientist with a knack for extraterrestrial technology.
Gerde? Well, you can guess what happened. An unseen hand guided her late adolescence and early adulthood. Doors opened up for her in prestigious medical schools, in spite of her gender, and she got all the hands-on she wanted. Opportunities wash over her like a maelstrom and she stands there, smiling wide, the better to take it in as gray science turns black, and then red.
Then out walks Dr. V, smiling and evil. "I have such sights to show you, my child," he purrs. She takes his hand, and then it's on to Auschwitz.
After the war, Dr. V got away pretty much scot-free. A surprising lack of evidence (no eyes means no witnesses) meant that they could only charge him with being a "fellow traveler," fine him 600 Marks and send him on his way. He got denied some things, sure, but once everyone got sick of dealing with each other's past they eventually let him return to prominence as a genetic researcher at U of Munster.
Shame about the automobile accident in 69, though. They say he just lost control of the vehicle. And the strange thing was that, when they pulled him from the wreck, his eyes were missing.
(That was HAGANAH, incidentally. Do not !@#$ with Israel's strategic talents. ABWEHR found that out the hard way a few times.)
But Gerde? She vanished after the war, just like an angel after the miracle's been seen and remarked upon.
Geri never tried to look for her. As far as she was concerned, she hadn't had a sister since they were in their teens. She once told me she'd hoped she'd been killed during the fighting, which was a terrible thing to say, but her sister was more terrible still.
Terrible indeed.
(SPYGOD is listening to Fly on the Windscreen {final} (Depeche Mode) and having some Chateau Adolf)
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