12/24/12 - Myron - Run Until You Drop - Pt. 4

"Then here are our needs, and our conditions," Doctor Power says to the presence, here with them. Floating outside their bodies. Amulet held high, eyes crackling.

(Strength is gathered. New strategy formed. Confidence is high)

"This body needs to be reanimated. It must be reanimated so as to look like it did in life. It must be reanimated to act as it did in life."

(The terms are spelled out exactly. Nothing left unsaid. No room to wiggle.)

"The deception must be so good that even its own family cannot tell that anything has happened. It must not do anything suspicious. It must not say anything suspicious."

 (Further clarifications are always necessary. The Abyss is full of rules lawyers. That's how most got to Hell in the first place.)

"The body will be reanimated until such time as we say we no longer need it to be. After that, you will retain no further hold upon it. After that, you will seek no further hold upon it."

(Because the Fallen rarely leave well enough alone. Always another deal. Always an attempt to make one.)

"This is what we require of you. In return, you may require of us one thing. It must not be permanent, nor spiritually, mentally, or physically damaging."

(They always start with souls. Then they want your mind, hoping to cause insanity. Then your body, hoping a handicap will force another deal.)

"Those are our needs, and our conditions. They are fair and just. Will you agree to them?"

(A long wait. It seems like hours go by. And then-)

* * *

"Let me explain what's really happened, here," Myron says, looking at each of the tall beings in turn: "You made three big mistakes, throughout your time on this planet. And as a result, you're not in any position to Attend to us."

"You overstep yourselves!" the one with the torch hisses: "We have no time to hear this nonsense-"

"You have all the time in the world," Myron insists: "We heard your story. You will now hear ours."

"And if we do not?" the One Who Attends asks: "We can stop this at any time we choose-"

Myron quickly pulls his gun out of his holster and holds it to his temple: "Then I tell these people, here, to do what I'm doing. We will die, here and now, and you will have failed to Attend to anything. Will your code forgive you for this?"

The trio take a step back, and Myron smiles, and continues:

"You see, your first mistake was coming to this planet. You picked a world where there was no real life, true, but you didn't count on evolution. And you, of all people, should have realized that a planet like this would eventually get life back on it. Maybe you should have picked Venus or something-"

"Um, there are people on Venus," one of the team members says.

"Oh, sorry, forgot," Myron shrugs: "Well, !@#$. You should have !@#$ing picked Mercury or something. It'd get a little hot but hey, nothing you people can't fix, right?"

He smiles, but the smile is not returned.

"Please continue," the One Who Stands Between insists: "I would hear more of this."

"I will, but first I want to hear you say that you agree with my reasoning," Myron says: "I want you to understand and recognize that I have a point, or this means nothing."

From the expression on their faces, he can tell the trio realizes he's turned the tables on them.

"I agree with your reasoning," the one with the Torch says.

"As do I," says the One Who Attends.

"And I," the One Who Stands Between says: "Please continue."

"Alright. Now, your second mistake you've already admitted to. You underestimated the Imago and how hard they'd fight to get out of here. They sacrificed themselves to create enough energy to help one of them escape, and it did. And everything that's gone wrong on our world over the last year is because of that."

"We have admitted to this, true," the one with the torch says: "But what is our third mistake, then? Being powerless to help you in your time of need? Confronting you for your crime, here and now? If so, we will reject these so-called mistakes out of hand-"

"Neither of them," Myron interrupts, the handle of the gun slick with his sweat: "Your third mistake was the worst of all. You had the perfect opportunity to make up for those two mistakes by doing one simple thing. And while I think we all know you could have done it, you didn't do it.

"You didn't tell us what had happened."

* * *

I have considered your request, the Fallen responds. Her voice is like a foghorn in their souls. It promises doom.

(Vibrating painfully. Eardrums breaking. A speaker full of glass shards.)

Before I say yes, I would know why she is so important. What is she to you, this person? Why would you risk so much to deal with us?

(A sensible question. But a hint of menace, there. A beehive in the treehouse.)

"If you can look into our hearts, you know the answer," Doctor Power insists: "We came here to save her. We failed, and so we are desperate."

(The truth, yes. But not the whole truth. And he knows she knows this.)

But you fear failure, in this case, the demon says. You know that, should this battle be lost, the war would end. You know that all depends on total success, for all of you.

(And there's the truth. Failure would have many consequences. Many of them for him.)

"That is true," Doctor Power says: "Many things hinge on her returning to the world, safe and alive. But you will have your payment, either way, so why is that important to you?"

(The wrong question, at the wrong time. The Knight leaps off the board. Failure.)

Because it means that I may now ask whatever I want, the demon coos, growing large enough to envelop the four of them: Should you refuse me, you fail everyone. And no one else will deal with you, now. 

(A slap in the face that shatters bones. The feeling of falling. And when she speaks again, it's like ice in the brain.)

 

* * *

"What do you mean?" the one with the torch asks: "We had no way to contact you-"

"Bull!@#$," Myron spits: "You could have found a way to talk to us at any time. All you would have had to do was get one of your guards to initiate contact."

"Guards?" the One Who Stands Between asks.

"Yes. The things you have prowling the inside of this place. The things you have outside, keeping people from getting too close. We called them DEROS, and we've known about them since World War II. But they were out there earlier, weren't they? Looking for your escaped prisoner?"

The trio are silent, and then the One Who Stands Between nods, solemnly: "This is true. We sent our servitors out to find our charge, and bring it back. We searched until we could search no more, and then, thirty or so of your years after the breakout, our charge took control of our servants, and came back to free the others."

Myron nodded, tightening his grip on his gun: "And everything that happened from there... well, you were all powerless, and I can't begrudge you that. But if that !@#$ got out of here in the 30's, and you got taken over in the !@#$ing 60's? Well, that was thirty years you could have found a way to contact us. You could have told us what was coming, and what we were up against-"

"And what would you have said?" the one with the torch snorts: "You forget, we know how you are, as a species. The best you would have done would have been to ignore us. But you would have wanted our technology, and when we offered you friendship you would have betrayed us-"

"Maybe," Myron admits: "But you should have tried. !@#$ you, you should have tried! And now... Jesus Christ, how many are they saying now...?"

"Maybe two billion," the team leader says, seeing where he's going with this: "Between who they killed before, all the people who died on 3/15, everyone they got rid of during their rule and all the people who died when we took the planet back. Israel. Yeah, two billion. At least."

"That's one person in three, dead," Myron says, shaking: "Parents who won't see their kids anymore. Kids who are orphans, now. Whole cities and towns wiped the !@#$ out. 

"And... you know? I'm a smart guy. I'll admit it, no shame in it. But even I can't visualize a billion. A hundred? Sure. A thousand? Okay. And maybe even a million I can figure. A million dollars buys an artificial island the !@#$ Gulf off the coast of Dubai if you talk to the right guy. 

"But a billion?" he says, shaking his head: "I can't conceive of a billion anything, much less a billion people. But now there's two billion dead.

"And all that?" he asks, pointing at them with his free hand: "That's on you. All of you. Because you could have told us what was loose in our world, and you didn't even try.

"And now? Now here we are, trying to salvage something... anything from this !@#$ing place, just so we can have some kind of a silver lining from all this? Just so we can understand more about our enemy? And you're !@#$ed off at us because we had no idea you were down here? 

"I mean, you let us go, right now? I make a phone call, and we leave, and no one comes back. No one. We can do that. I can !@#$ing guarantee it. Look in my mind if you don't believe I can, or will-"

"I know that you would," the one with the torch says: "But there is still the issue of-"

"The Lesson of the Lost Money. Yeah yeah. !@#$ you. How about the Lesson of the Three !@#$ Big !@#$ing Mistakes You Made That Cost Us A Third of Our !@#$ing Population?"

He shuts his mouth at that point, and just looks at the One Who Stands Between. The barrel's at his temple. His finger's on the trigger. 

And then, without him having to say anything, every other member of the team does the exact same thing. In solidarity, they show that they would rather die, here and now, than be administered "Attending" by such a hypocritical bunch of teachers. 

Together, they stand as one.

Waiting.

* * *

"So... what happened?" the psychologist asks. He's leaned up against a wall, on the other side of the room from Myron. 

"Well, I'm here..." he says, shaking his head as the fuzz finally leaves it. 

"I know that, but-"

"We reached an understanding," Myron says, looking up at him and smiling: "I think that's the best way to say it. The !@#$ put something into the body. In return, she took something from us, and then we went back into ours."

"What did she take from you?"

"I don't know," Myron sighs: "None of us did. I got the sense she wanted the most precious thing we had, but... !@#$ if I know what that was."

The man nods: "And then what happened?"

"Well, while we were all lying there, writhing and puking like we were coming down from a !@#$ fever, Doctor Power whammied our heads so we wouldn't !@#$ing remember any of this."

"But that didn't last."

"No. I don't think it was meant to, so if something went wrong we'd remember in time to fix it. Or maybe it was supposed to last, but he didn't have the power to make it permanent. He was running on !@#$ing empty by that point, to hear him tell it."

The psychologist nods: "And, of course, we can't ask him, now."

"No. We can't."

There's some silence, then. Myron coughs and tries to lean back, and then winces as he cuts his !@#$ on a fresh patch of broken bottle.

"So you know," the psychologist says, steeping his hands in front of his face: "I've been thinking. You said you think she wanted what was most precious to you? There's a lot of things that could be, and I'm not discounting your soul-"

"Gee, make me feel better, why don't you," Myron sighs.

"But if I had to guess? I think she took your personality away."

Myron blinks and sits up a little: "What do you mean?"

"Well, all your files? Everything I've ever read about you? I can see that you've been down, before. And with good reason, from time to time."

"Oh Jesus, I've been down before," Myron says: "You should have seen me after Zalea Zathros escaped, down in Costa Rica. I was a !@#$ing mess for days."

"And what happened?"

"SPYGOD kicked my !@#$. What else?"

"Did that help?"

"Well, maybe a little. But I think..."

The psychologist smiles: "Go on, Myron. You think."

"I think... I know. I got given something to do. Something important. And as soon as I was doing it, I was back on my feet again."

"Right, exactly," the man says, pointing to him: "And from what I've read of you, since then? When things go bad, you dive into some major project, and then you're good again. You feel good about yourself again. Having a challenge makes you feel like you have a purpose, a place in things."

"Yeah..." Myron says, blinking: "You know, that's right."

"But this time? This time, you haven't challenged yourself. You've just fallen down. And when people have tried to give you something to do? You just tell them to !@#$ off and leave you alone.

"And now..." the man gestures around the room: "Here you are."

Myron nods, some vestige of himself coming back into his eyes: "So what did everyone else lose?"

"Well, that's a !@#$ good question," the psychologist answers: "Maybe you should find out?

"How do I do that?"

"Well, maybe you could start by getting up off the floor?" the psychologist asks, taking his own advice: "Take a shower, have some coffee? When's the last time you got something to eat?"

Myron blinks and looks around: "You know, I don't... what day is it?"

"Tuesday. The day before Christmas?"

"Oh, !@#$," Myron says, and starts laughing. The laughing turns to tears, and then laughter again. And then nothing but deep sighs and shaking his head.

"You know, after all that !@#$?" he says, looking down at his hands: "After all that, I told myself this was going to be one !@#$ of a Christmas. I was going to have turkey and all the trimmings. Go see my mom, invite over Winifred and her family, get Randolph and his kids. !@#$, get SPYGOD there, too, if we could. Just have a big !@#$ blowout.

"And instead, here I am," he snorts: "Drunk in broken glass."

"Well, sounds like you got your work cut out for you," the man says, grabbing his briefcase: "I'm heading for my family, Myron. I suggest you find what remains of yours and see what you can do. After that shower, of course.

"And then? I suggest you meet up with everyone you were with, that day in the Ice Palace, and see if you can't figure out what you lost."

"Yeah," Myron says, knowing all too well what remains of his family, real and otherwise, and having a bad suspicion of what his comrades have lost.

"And thank you," the man says, looking back before he leaves the apartment: "For finally telling me."

"And to all a good night," Myron replies, waving goodbye. As soon as the man's out the door, he turns the wave into the bird.

"!@#$er," he sighs, wondering where the !@#$ is phone is, and who's left to call, and who would listen. 

Outside his window, it's started to snow. He looks outside at it, and remembers the last thing the One Who Stands Between told him, just before the one with the torch (whose proper name he never even learned) let them go.

"I think you, too, stand between," he'd said. But before Myron could ask if that was good or bad, they were all up in the chamber, where they'd began. All the other teams were back up there, dazed and confused for their ordeal.

And the hole in the floor was gone, as though it had never been.

"Never been..." Myron says, thinking of what he'd had with Winifred. Thinking he knows where the phone might be. Where she is. If he should call.

The snow keeps falling, even after he makes his decision. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Reach the Beach (The FIXX, dub remix) and having an Anchor Steam Christmas Ale)

12/24/12 - Myron - Run Until You Drop - Pt. 1

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Myron looks up at the well-dressed, sweet-smelling person who's sitting at his kitchen table, talking to him. He hasn't shaved in a few days, and stinks of bad sweat and sour alcohol. His bathrobe hasn't been washed in forever.

And a cloud of despair floats over him, like stinky lines over a cartoon character.

"I do," he finally admits, putting his head back down on his kitchen table. There's barely enough room on it for all the beer bottles he has to shove aside to do this.

(And as for the messy floor in this darkened room...)

"Well, I'm listening."

"I know. But you don't understand."

"What don't I understand, Myron?"

"I want to talk about it. Really, I do."

"Well, I'm here-"

"I can't," he says, looking back up through red eyes: "I !@#$ing can't talk about it. That's what's !@#$ing killing me, here."

"If you're worried about certain... things coming to light, I should tell you they're already out into the open," the person says, leaning in close: "No one is going to threaten you for telling me. No one is going to harm you, or fire you. All that's done, now. It's just you, me, and this room that you haven't left for too long."

"I know," Myron says: "I know all that. But I... I just can't, okay? I saw... I saw. I was !@#$ing there. And I can't talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever."

The psychologist nods, puts his papers back in his smart, leather briefcase, and gets up.

"Just so you understand, though?" the man says, turning to look behind him before he leaves: "This is our last conversation. I'm no longer assigned to you."

"What?" Myron says, sitting up a little.

"The COMPANY doesn't exist, anymore, Myron. I'm... well, I'm not certain what's going to happen, now. I'll probably be given an assignment in this Compagnie that the TU have created to replace it. But I'm not sure. They might just give me the boot."

"Then why the !@#$ aren't you out running up your COMPANY Card?"

"Who says I'm not?" he replies, smiling: "It's the day before Christmas. I have things to be and places to buy. So if you don't want to talk...?"

Myron looks at the man for a second. He weighs the options about throwing an empty beer bottle at him, just as a final !@#$ing mark of contempt. But then he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and decides not to end this that way.

"I appreciate you trying," he says.

"I'd appreciate you trying," the man says, taking a half-step back towards the table: "I'd appreciate you actually taking steps to get out from under this rock you've crawled under. I'd appreciate you taking a !@#$ bath once in a while, or maybe eating a bowl of cereal instead of drinking its fermented components down by the !@#$ twelve pack."

Myron smiles: "I got to you?"

"Officially? I don't care. I'm not !@#$ing supposed to. For all I'm supposed to care, you could wipe your !@#$ with mashed potatoes and try to hump the vacuum cleaner and I'm just supposed to take notes and make sure you don't hurt yourself."

"The vacuum cleaner probably would..." Myron mumbles, wondering if he even has a !@#$ vacuum cleaner.

"But as a human being?" the man goes on, gesturing around: "As one person to another? Jesus !@#$ing Christ you've gotten to me. I'm disgusted at you. !@#$, I'm disgusted for you. I've never seen someone just... fall, like this."

"Have you talked to the COMPANY Director, lately?"

The man glares at him. Myron smiles.

"You know," he says, reaching for another beer, and finding that -- oh thank God -- it's still unopened: "This one girl I was seeing, for a while? She saw something that really !@#$ed her up. It messed her up @#$ good and ugly, broke her !@#$ brain like a wine glass.

"But she dealt with it by pretending nothing was !@#$ing wrong. She worked like mad, !@#$ed me red and raw, late at night, just carried on, either making sure to not remember or not letting herself remember. I guess there's a difference?"

"There can be," the psychologist says, slowly putting his briefcase down on the floor.

"And then, one night, it came to her," Myron continued, opening the twist-top and having a slug: "I don't know why. Maybe it was just !@#$ing time, you know? But she remembered it all. And she was ready to talk about it. And then, well... she didn't need to work like mad, she didn't need me, anymore. It was all out and done."

He takes another slug, and cradles the bottle: "So, I think maybe I'm not ready to remember it, yet. I think I don't want to face it. I think I would rather crawl under a !@#$ rock and watch bad TV, now that I can, again, and just... not deal with it."

"And this is not cowardice because...?"

Myron looks at the man: "Because if it was okay for her, it's okay for me."

"Well of course you feel that way," the psychologist says, shrugging: "I mean, you were getting some because of it-"

Myron screams. He throws the bottle at the man. Then he charges out of his chair, ready to punch that smug, well-meaning face until it looks like he feels.

He doesn't get that far. His !@#$ falls straight onto the floor the moment he hits a nasty, wet spill and he goes down into a field of glass bottles. It's only luck -- or maybe a thick bathrobe -- that keeps him from having more broken glass cuts than he gets.

The man towers over him as he lies there, weeping and whimpering.

"I didn't come here to listen to you cry like a kid with a skinned knee," he says: "I came here to find out what !@#$ing happened in the Ice Palace, that day."

"You already know!" Myron screams, wiping blood off his chest and knees: "You already !@#$ing know! Why the !@#$ do you want me to tell you!"

"Because you're the only one who can really tell us what you went through," he says, kneeling down and getting his face an inch away from Myron's: "I know what SPYGOD said, and what the !@#$ President said, and what that !@#$ magician would probably say if we could !@#$ing find him.

"But you're the one who's broken," he says, putting his hands on Myron's shoulders: "You're the one who saw it and repressed it the hardest. You're the one who held on for as long as he could, through the trial. And then, after what happened at the White House..."

He doesn't want to say. No one really does.

"So you need to !@#$ing tell me, because you need to say it to yourself in a way that means something," the psychologist goes on."You need to get out of this hole you dug for yourself. But you can't get out if you don't climb.

"Can you climb?"

Myron looks at him, and then-

10/22/12

-smashes down on the communicator button: "Come on! Answer me! Can you at least climb out of there? Can you !@#$ing climb?"

The only answer from Team 10 is static.

"!@#$!" Myron shouts, tossing the communicator at the stone floor of the top chamber of the Lost City. Its breaking echoes all around, momentarily enveloping the sounds of heavy machinery that have been dominating this area since his team moved in, three days ago. They have small hover-pods, drone swarms, powerful excavation equipment, anti-gravity isolation cubes -- everything you'd need to explore and exploit an alien city.

Everything but luck, it would seem.

"So what do we do?" the leader of the next team asks, looking at the massive, circular hole in the floor that the last five just vanished into. They've been suited up and ready to go all this time, but he's clearly not caring to follow their lead.

"I'm all for cutting our losses," the leader of the team after that says, shaking her head and kneeling by the lip of the hole: "We got all the Imago, right? We don't need to go any further-"

"Wrong," Myron hisses, grabbing his gear and getting ready to go down: "We need to get our people out of there, and then we can cut our !@#$ing losses."

"Sir, be reasonable-" she's about to say, but then he just stares at her, and she shuts the !@#$ up.

"Reasonable doesn't apply, here, people," he says, looking at her, and then at everyone else: "Reasonable went out the !@#$ window the moment this thing came up out of the Pacific. Reasonable is in !@#$ing Bora Bora having a drink on the !@#$ beach and a moonlight swim. It's just us and whatever reasons we bring to the !@#$ table.

"And I say my reason is that we leave no one behind. Ever."

"There may be no one left to leave behind, sir," the leader of Team 11 says, clearly hating to take Team 12's side: "We don't know what all's down there. The !@#$ probes don't work after a certain depth, and reports have been confusing at best. And this was a prison-"

"Didn't you ever !@#$ing see 'Escape from Alcatraz'?" Myron snorts, all suited up and ready to go: "And didn't I mention I used to be in charge of a prison, once?"

No one has a good answer to that.

"You, what's your name?" he says, pointing at Team 12's leader as he puts on his sunglasses.

"It's Lt. Mekkelson, sir-"

"Your name is now Lt. Chicken!@#$," he snorts: "Isn't that right, Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir," she says, standing up and snapping off a salute: "Lt. Chicken!@#$, reporting for duty. Sir."

"Lt. Chicken!@#$, your orders are to stay up here and tally up everything that wasn't a loss. Call the Heptagon and tell them I'm going down, personally. If I don't physically make it back up here, then you call this a loss, and tell them I said not to send anyone else down there, even if they hear from me, or anyone else. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I mean that, Lt. Not until I'm back up here do they send anyone down, and even then they better crawl up my !@#$ fat !@#$ with a DNA sniffer to make sure it's !@#$ing me. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," she says, still at attention.

"One more thing. There's a black box in the main gear stowage. If it starts blinking, then there's a button in it. Press it, and get the !@#$ out of the way of the massive storage box I brought with me. Is that also clear, Lt. Chicken!@#$?"

"Yes, sir. All clear. 100%. Like crystal."

"I sure !@#$ing hope so," he scowls, turning away from her: "Because you just earned a lifetime of !@#$ from me, just now. I might give an opportunity to work it off, but until then? You're Lt. Chicken!@#$, in charge of cutting losses."

"And what are we doing, sir?" the leader of Team 11 asks, taking a step forward: "We're ready to go-"

"Team 11? You're with me. We're going down in the pods and running the probes ahead of us once we're inside. Bring the viewers with us. Their signal might not be getting out of there but I'm willing to bet they'll work fine for us inside."

"Yes sir," the leader of Team 11 says, snapping his fingers at two of his men, who get the equipment in question.

"We go down at least an hour," Myron says, heading for the team's brace of open-air hover-pods, like sci-fi rocket sleds with the engines on the bottom: "If we find the previous teams, we get who we can, record what we see, and get the !@#$ out. If we find no one, we record what we see, and get the !@#$ out. The moment it goes weird or nasty? We get the !@#$ out. No heroics. But we're not giving up until I say we're giving up. That clear, everyone?"

"Yes, sir!" the rest of the team says, getting into their sleds, each one made to handle three people. Two men get into Myron's, and strap themselves down to the sides.

And then the four sleds are up, and off, and going down into the large, dark hole in the floor that swallowed up the other teams.

As they pass through the lip of the entrance, Myron can't help but think that maybe he should have stayed back up top. Maybe he should have just taken the leader of Team 12 seriously and called it off. He should have cut his losses and run, and told SPYGOD that they wouldn't be getting any tech salvage or intel from this thing the Imago broke out of, however long ago.

He could have, and maybe he should have. But that wouldn't be him, now would it? Not anymore, anyway.

The circle of light above them gets smaller with each second. The stone tunnel they're floating down becomes damp, and the air within it starts getting heavy. He can sense the strain on the engines, and knows how this might end.

But then the smooth walls of the tunnel become something else -- something he didn't see up top, because all the probes stopped transmitting, and the sled cameras wouldn't broadcast, and the descriptions were only every fifth word, at best.

And as he looks at what they've flown into, and feels the sense of the unknown come back to him -- the thrill of adventure that he's missed for so long -- he can't help but think of that fateful day, not too long ago, when he was called upon to embark on another, further adventure. One at the South Pole, in the Ice Palace.

And what happened because of it.

And what he had to do...

* * *

... well," Doctor Power says, looking down at the broken body on the floor: "There is something I can do, but-"

"Then do it!" Mr. USA shouts, balling up his fists: "We didn't come all this way to fail! Not like this-"

"We didn't fail," Yanabah insists, gesturing to the screens: "We won, didn't we? We got the Imago. The war's over. We beat them."

"But we lost this," Myron sighs, looking down at the dead body: "And boy, if we'd just been a little sooner-"

"Well, we weren't," Mr. USA says: "But if there's something we can do? Something..."

"But... the cost," Doctor Power sighs: "You don't know what you're asking. I shouldn't have even said anything. This... this could be really bad."

"Bad is us coming this far and failing," Mr. USA says, putting his hands on the old magician's shoulders: "If we won back the world, and yet couldn't save her, SPYGOD's victory will be for nothing. The relationship he's built with the President will be over, again. And... you don't want to know what happens next."

"You might not want to know what happens if I do this."

"I think we can take that chance," Myron sighs: "I mean, what? Does someone have to die for her to live? Are we all !@#$ed to !@#$ for even watching, or something?"

Doctor Power looks at him. He looks into the other room, where Skyspear has taken the other two to help them calm down. He hears them weeping and wailing, their hearts broken, their minds shattered by the brutality they've witnessed here, today.

He makes his decision.

"Get me room," he says, pulling something out of his coat. Something that's on a chain around his neck.

"Oh, thank God," Mr. USA says, going to move tables out of the way: "I knew there was something-"

"God has nothing to do with this!" the magician shouts, not looking in the old hero's direction: "This is... this is a bad thing I'm doing here, (REDACTED). A terrible thing. I can only hope that it'll buy us time to try something different."

"Wait," Myron says, getting up: "What exactly are you going to do, here?"

And then, through eyes suddenly red and shaking with fear, Doctor Power tells them. He tells them exactly what he is going to do, and how, and why. 

And then, !@#$ them all, they agree to let him. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Question (The FIXX) and having a Black Magic)

7/20-21/11 - GORGON: No Hat, No Rabbit

When I was a child, I was traumatized by many things. One was my crazy uncle's forced trip to such a magic show, and the requisite pulling of a rabbit from a hat. I always wondered where the rabbit went to when the hat was worn.

I asked my uncle, but he told me to shut up and enjoy the show. "It's not fun if there's no mystery, (NAME REDACTED)" he said, as though I'd asked him how God and the Virgin Mary had done the deed.

So I imagined the answer. I thought there might be some little house for the poor fellow, tucked away inside that tall hat. He smiled to think that he might sit there, surrounded by rabbit-sized furniture like the animals in the illustrations from Wind in the Willows, eating carrots, !@#$ing, and generally looking as stupid as a Democrat who's lost his protest sign.

A week later we passed by the same theater. Someone took a trash can out and on the top was the same rabbit, dead. Flies were playing gin rummy across its pink eyes and looking for nice, moist places to drop their worm-babies.

You could have knocked me over with a lovetap. As it was, my uncle just boxed my ear and told me not to dawdle. This was the bad part of town, apparently.

So no, I never liked magic shows. They remind me of real life just a little too much. Only real life has a lot more blood and horror.

In real life you saw through the box and the pretty girl's in pieces, instead of grinning with her legs tucked up under her chin. In real life generals and majors say "abracadabra" or "presto" when they push the button down on nasty toys that kill thousands. (No joke.)

In real life the show stopper really does what it says it does, and applies it to entire countries.

That and I never ever trusted a tall, smiling man with a black tophat. My analyst would say that's psychic debris left over from the costumed villains we used to fight after the War, but my analyst also says I should be ten kinds of medication and in aversion therapy.

(That's why I shot him in the face with alien love god penis pellets the last time I saw him, about ten years ago. I wonder if he ever got over that psychic debris? Must remember to visit him where he's hiding, in Miami.)

You may be wondering why I'm bringing all this stuff up, son. Well, it's because while SPYGOD was off at SPYGOD SCOUT CAMP, the folks at GORGON decided to pull out of West Papua.

I had some people there, keeping an eye on things (if you'll pardon the triple entendre there) and, about last Wednesday or so, moving day occurred. Thousands of people who'd clearly been False Faces just vanished, leaving some towns and villages almost completely deserted. Sometimes they killed their families, friends, and neighbors on the way out, sometimes they left without leaving a mark.

On Thursday morning, about 8:45 in the AM, the sea boiled open with dozens of large submarines of uncertain make and model. Streams of dangerous-looking folks drove their high-tech personnel carriers through the streets of Erwang, on the Southern coast.

And when they had left, and authorities moved in, the entire town was full of human shapes with no minds or memories left. I think we know what that means, don't we?

So they're gone. Again. Which makes me wonder if they were ever really there. Was this entire episode just a feint after I pointed my finger at them and said "bang"? Or were they really in West Papua all along, but when I went after ABWEHR, instead, they had enough time to bug out?

This is the problem with this kind of work. You try and stay ahead of the doom curve, but most of the time you never know the full truth until it's either too late or academic. 

You never know where the rabbit meets the hat until the poor bunny's flopped over a bushel of rotting carrots in a greasy alley, somewhere.

Not that this is a dead end, of course. I have allies under the sea. They couldn't move that many subs around without someone noticing. There will be a round two.

I just hope I'm not too late to stop whatever they've got planned next. If they had that many people false-faced in West Papua of all places, I shudder to think how many people they've got elsewhere, and who. 

And if I'm worried, you should be petrified.
 

(SPYGOD is listening to Abracadabra (Steve Miller Band, remixed) and having some very strong coffee)