10/12/12 - A Death for No Reason

"So," the President says, putting his chopsticks down and having a long-overdue sip of his beer: "You still haven't told me how you got out of that situation in Yekaterinburg."

"No, I haven't," I answer, putting my big-!@#$ bottle down and looking him in the eyes: "I was waiting for you to tell me why you didn't shoot your target."

"How did you know...?" the President starts to ask me. Then I smile, and he remembers who he's !@#$ing talking to.

And then he just shrugs, sighs, and shuts the !@#$ up, which is how I like my Presidents. 

* * *

We're finishing up our lunch at the ridiculous, underground steak restaurant that I'm always threatening to take people out to, when I'm in Tokyo. You've heard of live sushi, son? Well, this is that, only on a larger, more intimate scale.

You not only get to see your food die, but you get to !@#$ing kill it.

That's right, son -- you pay a lot of !@#$ing money to have the help bring you a whole !@#$ cow, still alive, and leave all the tools and equipment necessary to kill, slaughter, prepare, and cook the !@#$ing thing. For a extra fee they'll do it for you, but it runs against the whole ethos of the establishment.
It's really meant for a full day's excursion for large groups of rich, somewhat cracked people. Me? I do it for a casual lunch.

And I just love !@#$ing taking new people here.

The President had no idea what the !@#$ was going on, today. We !@#$ing drank ourselves in and out of !@#$ing oblivion, after our deal, yesterday, and I didn't give him the time to sober the !@#$ up before taking him out. In fact, the security for this place is so !@#$ tight he thought we were going to yet another secret meeting, and got all !@#$ angry with me, because I didn't tell him what was up.

(You go to a !@#$ing imposing office in a large building in Marunouchi, sit in a waiting room, show off enough ID to sink a !@#$ boat, and swear you're not from the !@#$ health department. And then they put you in !@#$ car with blacked-out windows, and drive you around Tokyo for what feels like a !@#$ing hour. And if you ask too many questions on the way, they just ride around in circles for another hour, toss your !@#$ out by the docks, stamp on your !@#$ hands, and leave you to crawl the !@#$ home.)


So you can imagine his !@#$ surprise when finally arrive, he walks into the place (all decorated in cow hides, and staffed by large, Japanese women in cowboy hats and daisy dukes) and gets the first whiff of blood and !@#$.

Being polite, he just thinks we're at some strangely-placed steak restaurant, and that someone !@#$ing farted their guts out in the bathroom. It isn't until we walk by an open dining room, and he sees a group of sarariiman standing around a frightened heifer, waiting for the one with the bolt pistol to stop !@#$ing crying and kill the thing, that he knows what's up.

They're all wrapped up in clear, plastic raincoats, like they're in that one movie where Batman !@#$ing loses his !@#$,  and brandishing knives, and they're all staring silently at the crying guy. He must have drawn the short straw because no one wants to step in and help him, but no one's calling him a !@#$ing coward in that delightful, growly way the Japanese have of insulting each other, either.

(You don't have to pay the 60000 Yen per group until the !@#$ cow is dead, so you've got time to back the !@#$ out if you can't !@#$ing handle it.) 

We get to our dining room, I order the whole !@#$ing thing before the President can say a !@#$ thing, and then I make him a deal: I'll cut if he pulls the trigger, and then we can both cook our own meat. It took him a long !@#$ while to stop looking the !@#$ thing in the eye, put the pistol up to its !@#$ noggin, and put it out of its misery, but he did.

And then I let him sit down and have a !@#$ smoke and a beer at the table while I butchered the !@#$ing thing. And I'll tell you, son, you have no idea just how much work slaughtering a !@#$ cow is until you're up to your ankles in blood and steaming guts, with the smells of iron and !@#$ stinking up your nose.

(Learned it from villagers in north Vietnam, in case you were !@#$ing wondering. Good people. Great cows.)

An hour later, I've got the cuts washed and laid out on the chilled, clean surface they provide for you, and the President's got the grill going. Fifteen minutes later we're cooking and eating and drinking !@#$ good beer. And then he's !@#$ing full but I'm still working on the thing until it's skin, bones, and the guts I don't really !@#$ing care for.

(You have to eat the !@#$ing liver, son. If you think you !@#$ing hate liver, you haven't ripped it out of a still-steaming belly of a cow, sliced it thin, and tossed it onto the !@#$ing grill. No onions or mustard needed, here!)

After that, it's all over but the chopsticks, the sauce, and what's either exhausted satisfaction or true horror -- maybe both. They have blood-flavored ice cream for dessert, if you're still feeling !@#$ing adventurous, but you're probably better just getting the !@#$ check and going back to Marunouchi.

I've been going to this place since it opened, back in the 80's. I find it's perfect to put certain things into !@#$ing perspective. Capitalism. Consumerism. Carnivores-prey relationships. Our weird disconnection from the food we eat.

And, ultimately, war.

* * *

"So, did you feel sorry for Wen, or did you just lose your nerve?" I ask the President.

"A little of both, I think," he says, not quite wanting to look me in the eye: "I thought there was some way we could fix this, just for a second-"

"And then it was too late."

"Yeah."

"Imago?"

"Four of them. They appeared out of nowhere and he... I don't know, it looked like he was breaking down. I guess working with us was screwing him up."

"Oh, you could say that," I tell him, cutting off some more of that delicious liver I just cooked: "And I know better than to ask if you !@#$ing remember how to handle it when that happens."

"'Better !@#$ing rotting than !@#$ing talking,'" he quotes me, verbatim.

"!@#$ straight. And then you felt sorry for the fat !@#$."

"Yes."

"Well, next time? Don't. And I'll tell you why. You want to know what those Harolds are to us, Mr. President?"

"What?"

"You're !@#$ing eating it," I say, pointing my chopsticks over at the stinking pile of bones and offal that used to be a cow, over in the corner.

He looks at the cow, looks back at me, and nods: "Point taken."

"Good."

"So, my question. Was there any truth to anything I told him?"

"Like what?" I ask, chowing down on some more liver. The soy sauce here is !@#$ing exquisite.

"Like that box, for example. You had me give it to him so he could call me for help, in case things got hairy."

"Yes."

"Did it have a dual function, or was it always just a !@#$ing bomb?"

I smile a little, imagining the scene. There's Wen Boxiong, surrounded by floating Imago, crying his eyes out because he's !@#$ing convinced they know what he's been up to with us. And then he's slowly realizing that they didn't know, and he just confessed, Tell-Tale Heart style. So he pulls out the call box I had the President give him, hoping that somehow I'd come flying the !@#$ out of nowhere to save his fat !@#$ from the brutal brain-sucking they were about to give him.

But instead of calling me, it explodes, creating a fire hotter than white phosphorous, designed to completely incinerate everything within a radius of ten feet, and light paper on fire up to fifty feet away. It turns him into stray, singed, and traitorous molecules in a split second, thus ensuring that no one is going to stick their metal-plated thumbs into his eye sockets and read his !@#$ mind the hard way.

(Effective !@#$ing things, those blastboxes.)

Of course, it probably didn't so much as inconvenience those !@#$ing Imago, but they were so !@#$ surprised by the thing that it gave the President more than enough time to pick his !@#$ jaw up off the floor, pack up his !@#$, and run like !@#$ to Shanghai. Which is why he was able to grab his waiting disguise from the Ju Kikan's dropoff, prove a bunch of idiot birthers right by way of a phony passport and a highly-exotic disguise system, and get his !@#$ to Japan. 

As opposed to getting caught assassinating a foreign head of state, followed by what would have been one terrible !@#$ of an interrogation, and maybe a trip back to where those !@#$ing sick alien metal-wrapped body-jacking bastards left him, the last time they got their hands on him.

Of course, I'm so !@#$ing wrapped up in imagining all that that I forget there's a question I need to answer. So I smile at the President, have another delicious bite of cow's liver, and tell him the !@#$ truth.

"It was dual use. I had it switched over to call us, up until the point that I realized that keeping him alive was more dangerous than useful. And then I switched it to explode if he did."

"And when did you decide he wasn't worth it, anymore?"

"When I thought he might have squealed on us, after what happened at the train station."

"I think he did," the President admits.

"Well, I know he didn't," I say: "It was that Russian !@#$weasel. Try to keep up-"

"Not to the Imago," the President says: "I made a few inquiries, while I was waiting for you to rendezvous with me, here. That day I lost track of him? He went to the Botanical Gardens. He met someone there."

"Who?"

"I don't know. She was contacted as a beautiful older woman in a white coat. They were seen talking, then they went away. And when they were seen, later, she left alone in a huff, and he stumbled out of there like he'd been dumped with a vengeance."

"'Beautiful older woman?'" I ask.

"Caucasian. Dark hair. Long white hat. Smoked cigarettes with a black holder. Acted angry with him, then cozy. They looked like they might be going off into the trails to fool around...."

He goes on for a bit, there, but I'm not really listening. Because I know of exactly one !@#$ person who dresses like that and smokes like that, and I haven't seen here since all this !@#$ trouble started. 

Geri !@#$ing Yesterday -- wife of Dr. Yesterday, who I know has been replaced by the Imago, and had a big !@#$ hand in what happened on 3/15. 

She hasn't been seen since then, and I always assumed he's just !@#$ing killed her as part of his part in the plan. But then, she was always a !@#$ of a lot smarter than him, now wasn't she? 

And there is no !@#$ way that someone that smart gets !@#$ing killed by some stupid alien !@#$ who's replaced her beard. 

At some point in the President's over-exerting attempt to sound like a competent intelligence professional, instead of someone who !@#$ed up his first real job, I hold up a finger and look at him. Thankfully, he falls silent, so I don't have to punch him so I can hear myself think.

"Part of the reason I used Wen was because he was on my triple-red list," I say: "He was mentally weak, morally questionable, and in a position where those two traits would make him really easily talked into doing whatever the !@#$ we wanted."

"I think I remember you saying this, before."

"Well, we're not the only country with a triple-red list," I go on: "And I always figured it was only a matter of time before someone got to him."

"Alright, so are you saying someone else got to him after we did?"

"No. I'm starting to think someone !@#$ing got to him before we did," forgetting about my !@#$ing liver and going for the beer: "How does a shuddering, friendless loser like him get put in charge of those kinds of secrets, anyway?"

"Someone put him there," the President says: "Someone wanted him in charge of those files. So they could control the files through him."

"Only we come along and talk him into being a triple agent," I say: "So maybe this other person got him a long time ago, and he's had time to think it over and thinks we might be able to get him a better deal?"

"Or maybe something changed," the President suggests, taking a bite from my liver, since I'm not !@#$ing eating it: "My contact said it looked like they were two people who hadn't seen each other in a while. He was nervous as !@#$, and she was angry, then cozy."

"Like two old lovers, meeting again," I muse: "Must have been one !@#$ of a makeup !@#$, back in the bushes."

"So say he talks to her, and say he tells her everything. But the Imago tell you it's the President of Russia who gave you away. No talk about her at all."

"So who is she, and what kind of game is she running?" I ask, not yet wanting to disclose that I'm pretty !@#$ sure I know who she is, just yet. 

"My guy wasn't able to get a decent photo" the President sighs, handing me a piece of paper. I take it and open it, and see a decent copy of a decent security camera photo from the Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, the area of interest looks like a computer !@#$ing threw up all over it.

"Electromagnetic shielding," I say: "Really sophisticated stuff, but not the best available. The really good !@#$ works so well there isn't even an effect. You don't even show up on the camera."

"Vampire coats," the President says, having some more of my liver: "I remember you talking about those, too."

"Alright then," I say, grabbing his beer and knocking it back, which makes him stop eating my !@#$ food: "We got ourselves a !@#$ing mystery to solve, here, Scooby Doo. But the problem is that we don't !@#$ing have time. The Imago are going to finish mopping up our little distraction in the next 48 hours, and that means we have a war of our own to start."

"We can farm this out," the President suggests: "We have enough people with their hands in their pants, don't we? We can have one of them look into it."

"Good idea," I say: "But before we start talking about bringing someone else into it? I just want to be clear on one !@#$ thing. The next time I tell you to kill someone? Just !@#$ing do it."

He looks at me, and nods: "I will."

"Because the next time this happens, I will just !@#$ing cut you loose and leave you on the sidelines," I tell him: "I don't care if that means it takes me twice as long to do what needs to be done. If I can't rely on you in the field, I can't have you out there. And I can just have you locked up in a !@#$ing hotel room in Tijuana until it's time for your close-up.

"You got that?"

He looks at me again, and nods: "I got it."

"Good," I say, knocking back the rest of his beer, and then regarding the dead cow in the corner.

"You got your speech, ready?" I ask after a while in silence. 

"Best I've written," he says, patting his shirt pocket: "You got the rest ready?"

"Pretty much," I lie: "Just a little more finagling, and we got ourselves a revolution."

He smiles, and leans back. I know he knows I'm not being entirely truthful. And I know that he knows that I know.

And maybe that's the real lesson of this crazy !@#$ meal, after all. 

 (SPYGOD is listening to Meat is Murder (The Smiths) and having some Asahi)

10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 3

The President of the United States now realizes the enormity of his mistake.

He should not have hesitated. He should not have assumed he had the time to take a second and think about what he was doing. He should have taken the shot and killed Wen Boxiong.

But now he has no recourse. The Imago are here, floating around him. He will simply have to wait for one of them to get out of the way for him to fire.

And he realizes that, the moment he fires, the Imago will sense his presence, and come for him. He may just have enough time to press the button and destroy his apartment, and press another button and destroy the gun. But he won't have any time to get away after that.

The moment he pulls the trigger he is most likely going to kill both the General Secretary and himself.

(Thus proving a whole, probably-now-deceased gaggle of Washington Neo-Cons right, he grimly notes.)

But that is of no matter. The man must die. The President must be the one who kills him, even if it kills him, too.

He tries to vector the shot differently, wondering if he would have a better angle if he stood, or moved to another window. But by the time he left, anything could have happened. It would be far better to watch and wait for the right moment. 

As he watches the encounter go on, he realizes that Wen is becoming agitated -- quite animatedly so. He cannot hear what he is saying, but he seems to be screaming it at them.

"What are you doing?" he asks, wondering why the man he was about to kill seems ready to commit suicide by alien invader. 

* * *

 

"Greetings to you, O SPYGOD," a booming, self-satisfied voice announces, just a second before its owner teleports into the empty room, there to join the fifty or so Specials who arrived just five seconds before. 

The ex-President of Russia and SPYGOD are in the center of a circular firing squad, staring down a lethal ring of gauss rifles. The Imago appears in the doorway they came through, his Orange and Gold arms outstretched as if in welcome, or if he were gracefully landing. His smile seems as wide as his face.

And his eyes are afire with malice thinly disguised as kindness.

"Well howdy-do to you, too, !@#$face,' SPYGOD snorts: "I guess you found me."

"We did indeed, O SPYGOD."

"You didn't seriously think that !@#$ty plan of yours was going to work, did you?" he asks, weighing his options: "You really should have just !@#$ing killed the President, !@#$hole. I eat nasty-!@#$ alternate realities for !@#$ing breakfast. Ask anyone."

"You are indeed an unusually resilient man, O SPYGOD. But-"

"Wen talked, didn't he?"

"Wen?" the Imago asks, seemingly perplexed: "Which Wen would that be?"

"You know who, you tin-plated !@#$-"

"No," the ex-President says, holding up a hand while fishing around in his mouth for another, broken tooth: "I just told you, SPYGOD. I told them where we were, after a fashion."

"Explain, Valentina," SPYGOD says, taking a step back from his captive but still pointing his gun at his head.

"I was charged to make a report every night. If I did not, then it could only mean that I had been compromised, and that could only be by you, or one of your people. So they would begin tracking me, and follow where it led. Though I think the ending point was never in doubt."

"You...?" SPYGOD says, blinking and taking another step back: "Not Wen? You?"

"Yes, SPYGOD," the ex-President says, smiling through a mouth of broken teeth: "Me."

* * *

"Just do it, already!" Wen Boxiong shouts at the Imago surrounding him, jumping up and down like some kind of idiot: "I know that you know! I know what she told you!"

"Who is this person you speak of, O Wen Boxiong?" One of the Imago asks.

"You know who she is! Stop toying with me!"

"What are we supposed to know, O Wen Boxiong?" Another asks.

"You know what I've done! She told you! Stop it!"

"Perhaps you should calm down, O Wen Boxiong," yet another suggests: "We do not know what you are talking about-"

"Stop it stop it stop it!" the man shrieks, balling up his fists and shaking: "I hate you! You and your smirking faces and metal brains! This is torture!"

"Why do you accuse us of torture, O Wen Boxiong?" One asks.

"Why are you so certain we know something worth harming you over, O Wen Boxiong?" Another asks.

"What are you trying to say, O Wen Boxiong?" Yet another asks.

The man howls and screams, his face turning as red as blood and his eyes screwed shut. Even like that he can see their smiling faces and friendly eyes, and feel the contempt they hold him in. Why won't they just tell him what they know and then kill him?

Why are they being so !@#$ cruel?

* * *

"Bull!@#$," SPYGOD snorts, looking at the Imago and then his captive: "Then why did they blow up that train just after I found out my contact in Beijing might have been made?"

"A necessary deception," the Imago announces: "We did not want you to suspect you were being set up for a trap. We calculated that throwing an attempt on your life in your path would make you feel as though you were, as you say, jumping through the correct number of hoops."

"Well it's a !@#$ funny coincidence-"

"It was just that, SPYGOD," the ex-President says, finally getting his hands on that pesky, busted tooth and pulling it out for inspection, and disposal: "A coincidence. But at the same time, a coincidence you can believe in."

"The proper poetry of things," SPYGOD glowers: "And if I hadn't seen it was coming, what then?"

"You would have survived, and made certain that he did as well," the Imago says: "The ammunition we used on that train was not anywhere as harmful to you as what these guns are loaded with."

"And even if you did not save me, I would see to it that you were given the means to get here," the ex-President says, fishing in his pocket and holding out a small, black cube: "This key also opens the door."

"You !@#$ing idiot," SPYGOD says, looking at the man he's been bullying, beating, and carting around Russia for the last few days: "Why? What on Earth could have !@#$ing gotten you to go in with these things? Don't you know what they are? Don't you know what they do?"

"They came to me after I disappeared," the ex-President explains, his eyes suddenly wet and reverent: "I thought I could evade them, but they showed me the lie in that. And they told me of the Day, and the plan, and I realized that this was the moment my entire life was building towards."

"Really? What the !@#$ are you getting out of this? A lifetime supply of Vodka?"

"I will be leaving with them," he says, smiling: "When the Day comes, and this world is forfeited, I will be riding their ship with them. Together we will go into the darkness, hand in hand. I will know eternity, my friend. And you will help me."

"When the day comes?" SPYGOD asks, looking at the Imago.

"Oh yes, O SPYGOD," the Imago says: "We are surprised you had not pieced it together already. This is not an invasion.

"This is an escape."

* * *

As the President watches the encounter go on, he realizes he cannot make the shot. Not cleanly, anyway.

It will only be a matter of time before one of them reaches out, takes hold of Wen's face, and begins to drain his memories. At that point the entire game will be up, and everything they have worked for will be over. 

He decides on a course of action. It will not be clean, quick, or pretty, and it will leave no chance for escape at all, but he will have to do it.

He adjusts his aim. One shot to the knee will bring the man down so that his head is on the ground. And one more shot after that will turn that head to useless, red mush.

But two shots will delay him a few critical seconds, which will be all the time they will need to find him. And then all he'll be able to do is die in such a way that they learn nothing. 

He thinks of his wife as he does this. He wishes he could find a way to say goodbye, and that he loves, her, just one more time.

His finger is on the trigger, and he makes ready to pull it.

* * *

"O Wen Boxoing, I fear you are trying to tell us something," the Imago who's done most of the talking says: "What is it? What should we know? What are you so afraid of us knowing?"

The General Secretary unscrews his eyes and looks up at the floating, metal man. And in those eyes he realizes, for the first time, that he has misjudged this encounter. 

They were not here to kill him for his sins. They were not here to question his loyalties, or confirm their suspicions. 

They really did just want to know if he was alright, given that he went off the grid the last few days.

"I..." he stammers, realizing that he has condemned himself. There is no way out of this. They are going to kill him.

Unless...

* * *

"Getting out ahead of the big nasty thing you've been warning us about, huh?" SPYGOD asks, wishing he had a cigarette to pull on, right about now: "Yeah, I didn't really !@#$ing think you were going to save us."

"Exactly, O SPYGOD," the Imago says, gesturing to the room they are in: "The spacecraft is not meant to defend against (UNINTELLIGIBLE CONCEPT). If we wished to fight it, we would simply use Deep Ten, but even its mighty armaments will mean nothing to the creature when it arrives."

"It's meant to get them and their trusted servants off the planet in time," the ex-President says, the look of starry-eyed reverence still making his eyes glow as he turns to look at the Imago: "Everything that has been done... the orbital elevator, the harvesting of energy, the freeing of the Imago from their prison... all has been done to further this goal."

"Trusted servants," SPYGOD says, looking at his captive: "Your escape is built on the backs of the dead, Valentina."

"Isn't everyones?" the ex-President asks, smiling at his savior.

SPYGOD raises his gun and shoots the man in the skull, right in one temple and out the other, pulping his eyes in his sockets at the same time.

"A foolish gesture, O SPYGOD," the Imago says as their loving servant falls to the ground, dead as a stone: "Do you not imagine we already know everything that he does?"

"That wasn't protection for me, !@#$face," SPYGOD says, dropping his gun on the floor and raising his hands: "That was mercy for him. I'm sure whatever you had !@#$ing planned for him would have been !@#$ing awful."

"We merely would have used his energy to further our goals. Not a painless fate, but not awful either-"

"You took a walking weasel of a man who believed in nothing but what he could gather for himself, and made him believe in a cause higher than himself for the first time in his life. You filled his head with bliss and his heart with joy. And then you were going to !@#$ing pull the rug out from under him right when he thought his reward was due?"

"That is essentially correct, O SPYGOD-"

"Well, maybe they don't have the word 'cruel' where you come from, you metal !@#$-stain, but that's about as cruel as it gets."

"Oh, we understand cruelty, O SPYGOD. Perhaps better than you do."

"I !@#$ing doubt it-"

"You do not understand our story, O SPYGOD. You know only the edges of it. You know nothing of who we were, or how we came to be here, or why. You see our actions as evil, perhaps monstrous, but you of all people should know that a people will do anything to survive."

"And you should !@#$ing understand that we might have helped you, if you'd just !@#$ing asked," SPYGOD says: "All you ever had to !@#$ing do was ask for help."

"That is not in our nature, O SPYGOD." 

"Well, neither is rolling over and dying, O !@#$face. We will also do anything to survive. And if there's one thing I can do, it's do anything." 

"You can, indeed. We have clearly underestimated you, O SPYGOD. It will not happen again."

SPYGOD smiles as the Specials re-aim their guns right at him.

"Just so you know," SPYGOD says, looking right at the Imago: "Everything that !@#$ing happens from here on out? That's on you. All of you."

"It is indeed," the Imago says, and gives the order to fire.

* * *

The President of the United States of America pulls back on the trigger, making ready to shoot Wen Boxiong in the knee.

Wen Boxiong pulls out a small box and presses a button, expecting to get help from the man who's about to shoot him.

SPYGOD outstretches his arms, as if he is ready to embrace death at last. 

And then...

(SPYGOD is listening to Strobe: Fragments (Front 242) and having a Baltika no 6)

10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 2

Of course, walking for "some time" turns out to be a long time. Several miles, in fact -- all done along a very old, very unsafe length of underground tunnel that seems ready to all come down at a moment's notice.

The walls writhe and pulse with generations of strangely-colored spiders the size of a young boy's hand, none of which care to skitter out of the way of the flashlight beam the way such things should. The ceiling and walls have collapsed in some areas, especially around the center of the city above, necessitating close squeezes and careful crawls around the falls.

And this means getting up close and personal with the legions of arachnids, leading to bites that they only hope aren't poisonous, or worse.

Along the way there are revelations -- broken doors and collapsed walls revealing treasures from a bygone age. Old soviet powersuits rust in the damp, awaiting a war that will never come, now. Rack upon rack of fully-grown clone soldiers rot in their jars, the preservatives having long since ceased to be worth the name. Harvested psychic brains still kept alive after all these years feebly whisper of missile launches yet to come, unaware that no one has listened to them for almost a quarter of a century.

"Ah, Sverdlovsk," SPYGOD says as he regards the ruins of a captured alien spacecraft more jellyfish than saucer: "You guys really had some weird !@#$ going on here, back in the day."

"You should know," the ex-President of Russia says, itching a very bad spiderbite at his neck: "You penetrated the defenses enough times, you and your men. Did you not stop to look? Or were we chasing you too swiftly?"

"Mission specific maneuvers, Valentina" he says, casting his flashlight back on the path ahead: "If you come for the crown jewels you don't have !@#$ing time to grab the Rolls Royce, too."

"Unless you can escape in it."

"Spoken like a true professional."

"And you would know, wouldn't you?"

"Says the man I caught !@#$ing napping in his safehouse," SPYGOD snorts: "How much were you paying that poor metal !@$ to be your human shield? You should get your money back."

"Perhaps I will," the ex-President says. And something about how he says it -- and how he reacts to SPYGOD's silence at the end of that reply -- tells SPYGOD that he knows what's coming next.

Which makes him just a little more dangerous, now. But it's not like he can get away from down here, now is it? All SPYGOD needs to do is step on the flashlight, and he's !@#$ing dead.

And the more he thinks of it, the more he thinks he might just do that.

* * *

The President of the United States of America breathes slowly, trying to enter the slow, grey space he needs to be in to make this shot work. He imagines the rifle as an extension of his own body: his eye the scope, his finger the barrel and the trigger.

The bullets his will to see this man dead.

He blanks his mind of any thoughts of that man. They did not work together, or talk together. He did not teach the man how to blend in better, and shake his security detail. They did not share confidences as one leader to another. They did not laugh at jokes or have that one meal, at a corner noodle place that the man liked to visit incognito.

He is not betraying him now, even though he is. 

But it is one betrayal for the freedom of the world. One death to save billions of lives.

"I'm sorry," the President says, wondering how true that really is. But it's now or never, never or now.

And then he takes a deep breath, compensates for the wind, and makes ready to pull the trigger back as soon as the target -- no longer deserving of a name -- comes into view.

Any second now.

* * *

"This is it," SPYGOD's captive says, gesturing to a sealed door to his left. It's a big, green, metal thing, with a keypad attached to it, and what looks like a rifle sight attached to that.

"The room containing all the !@#$ files on Unit 731," SPYGOD says: "That and all the equipment you had up there, trying to replicate their results. All grabbed and shoved down the memory hole after that little accident with the !@#$ing anthrax. Just like this city's old name, huh?"

"That would be correct," the man says: "But as always, the memory hole is not always final. We keep some things alive, just in case."

"And boy is that !@#$ing good for you," SPYGOD sneers: "Open it up. Let's see what's been keeping your sorry !@#$ alive for the last few days."

"But let me ask you this," the ex-President turns to look SPYGOD in the eye: "Do you really think you will have the time to find what you need to? There is a lot of information in there. Files upon files, in Japanese, Chinese, Russian... you would need an army to sift through it, and another to decode its many secrets."

"So you're saying it's too tough, and I should just !@#$ing quit?" 

"I'm not saying you should quit, but I am saying-"

A crack across the face with the butt end of a gun ends his sensible talk, and he holds his hand to his cheek, wondering if it's broken.

"You need to hear what I am saying, Valentina," SPYGOD says, getting right in his face and putting a finger right between his eyes: "Right now, you are looking at a desperate man. I have a planet to save, and so far the only way I've found to do it is to do something that is so !@#$ing terrible, that even I couldn't !@#$ing live with myself if I had to do it. And if anyone ever finds out that I did it, I'd be !@#$ing tossed in a cell and thrown into the !@#$ Sun to roast like a human marshmallow. 

"Now, do I look like I want to be turned into a !@#$ing human marshmallow, Valentina? Because something tells me you know the answer to that is 'no.' And that means that if the only way to find a solution to this problem is to go in there, get on my hands and knees, and root around like a pig to find out if there's something about GORGON that wasn't in the files in Beijing, then by God I will !@#$ing get on my hands and knees and root around like a !@#$ pig. I'll even !@#$ing squeal and roll around in mud if it'll help.

"Now are you going to help me save the world, or am I going to jam your !@#$ing skull into that retinal reader and guess at combinations until I get the right one?"

The ex-President looks at him, and then at the reader, and then goes to the door. He puts his eye up to the sight and types in a six-digit code. A light shines from inside the sight, and he steps back, squinting at its brightness.

And then, with a foul, metal-and-oil smell and a satanic hiss, the green metal door slides out, then in, and then to the left, revealing a dark hole beyond.

"On the third wrong try you would have triggered a bomb," he says, rubbing his zapped eye: "One that I think would have even killed you."

"Well, guess we'll never know, now," SPYGOD says, hoisting up his gun and looking inside.

* * *

At last, the target steps into view, and he's all alone. 

Wen Boxiong walks into the kill zone, looking like a condemned man on the way to the gallows. He's going slowly, as if he was in no hurry to get to work. And maybe he isn't.

The President adjusts his aim. All he needs is one good, clear shot, right through the medula oblongada, and this can all be over. The explosive ammunition will turn the man's head into a red cloud of smoke, wiping away all chance of the enemy finding out what he knows.

Wiping away all traces of there ever having been a conspiracy against their evil order. 

He hesitates for just a second, trying to rationalize this. Wondering if there really isn't any other way to do this. Couldn't they just talk? Can't they disappear together? Would that be so bad?

(SPYGOD screaming in his face. Hitting him repeatedly. Telling him he !@#$ed up everything. Never seeing his wife and daughters again. The world ending. God telling him he !@#$ed up the whole planet. Hell waiting just for him.)

Yes, it would be that bad.

He takes another deep breath, compensates once more for the wind, and again makes ready to pull the trigger back. The man, the tool, and the weapon, all united in purpose to do one swift and terrible thing, here and now. 

But just before he can, there's a weird light, all around Wen. He stops in his tracks and looks up, and suddenly he is surrounded by four Imago, who float around him like metal angels.

And one of them is blocking the President's shot.

* * *

SPYGOD roughly pushes his unwilling companion into the dark room ahead of him. Then he stalks in after, gun up and ready to fire, scanning it from left to right as he slowly puts one foot in front of the other.

The room is large and circular. It is lit with passive lighting systems that come on as they enter, creating a dull aura of visibility that's just enough to see by, but not much more than that.

But he doesn't need it, or his eye, to tell that there's nothing in this room.

Nothing at all.

"What the !@#$ing !@#$..." he says, turning in a circle, astounded by this.

"It is empty, my friend," the ex-President says, shrugging: "Even you can see that?"

"There's nothing here."

"That is what they mean by empty-" the man starts to say, but is quickly silenced by a rough blow to the face, sending him sprawling across the floor, teeth falling from his mouth as he goes.

"Where is it?" SPYGOD screams: "Where the !@#$ is the information, !@#$hole? Where are the files? Where is the !@#$ you got from the Japanese?"

"Gone," the ex-President says, struggling to get to his feet: "Destroyed."

"What do you mean, gone, destroyed?"

"I mean gone, and destroyed," he says, slowly rising and fixing SPYGOD with a look: "I saw to its removal and burning not that long ago, actually. A little over six months ago, in fact."

"Why?" SPYGOD hisses, stomping over and shoving his gun under the man's chin: "Why the !@#$ did you get rid of it?"

"In case this happened," he says, still giving SPYGOD the look: "And look, it has. I guess we deduced your moves correctly, my friend."

"What do you mean?"

"Didn't you think that it was too convenient that you actually found me?" the ex-President says, smiling with more than a little contempt in spite of the gun in his face: "You should have known me better than that, SPYGOD. I've been playing this game long enough to stay hidden, should I want to."

"So you wanted me to find you, and bring you here, to an empty !@#$ing room," SPYGOD says, getting ready to punch him again: "Why?"

"So they could have you."

"They who?" SPYGOD demands, but he already knows the answer to that question.

They're teleporting in, even now.

(SPYGOD is listening to Collision (Front 242) and having a Stary Melnik) 

10/04/12 - I Will Never Be Clean Again - pt. 1

Wen Boxiong does not get out of bed to turn his alarm off. He never does.

The piercing noise wakes him up, yes, but he does not leave his bed to be done with its annoyance. Instead he lies in his bed, staring at the ceiling and trying to catch the last vestiges of his dreams before they leave him. To let the final, fleeting strands of them play out as they will, before they are gone forever.

As a young boy he was saddened that his dreams were so quickly forgotten, shortly after waking. He did not want to leave the warm cocoon they had spun around his mind at night., but he could not catch them like this, then. He had to go to school, or to work, or to attend his mother's endless needs, and she was not one to let him lie about dreaming in his bed.

After one memorable occasion, in which the sweetest dream imaginable was shattered by her screaming in his face to wake up, he swore that when he was older, and no longer under her roof, he would not let a single dream go unresolved. He would watch them leave as gently as they came, and only then -- when their edges had blurred and plots had fallen to pieces, and there was no more joy to be had from them -- would he rise to meet the day.

And so he did.

This extended arrangement with his dreams has not always been easy. He has had to rise from slumber earlier than he would like in order to have the time to let the visions leave of their own accord without being late for his responsibilities. He has never had anyone stay the entire night with him, as their presence there would complicate his sleeping and waking. And this lack of total togetherness has all but ensured that his liaisons have been short and one-sided.

(Except for the time with her, but that was strenuous and strange, and left him erotically inspired and politically elevated, but broken inside.)

But he is happy with this. His dreams are his own, now and forever. No one can take them from him. And they come and go at his choosing.

Which is why, when his alarm goes off today, he lets it ring and ring for a full hour, until it shuts off by itself. He watches the dreams until they are shambling parodies of what they were when he first opened his eyes. And he cries to see them leave at last.

Because he knows this is the last day. The last morning. The last dream.

Today he will look in the mirror and see a man condemned.

* * *

SPYGOD doesn't so much wake up as crack himself back into motion, as though someone flipped a switch in his skull. He stands straight up, tenses and relaxes his muscles, cracks every joint in his body in one loud wave, and grunts. He blinks one eye, does a 360 scan with the other, and farts loud enough to wake the dead.

He's spent all night sitting in the corner of the underground bolthole he's sharing with the ex-President of Russia, hovering over the ridiculously-opulent vodka he appropriated for the revolution, yesterday. Why it costs three million dollars a bottle he'll never know; he's had a lot better for far cheaper. He figures it must be all the gold and gems on the outside of the glass, rather than what's sloshing around inside of it.

(Which probably explains everything anyone ever needed to know about life, quite frankly.)

SPYGOD has to be very !@#$ careful when looking at himself in the mirror. If he looks at himself straight on, the Chandra Eye creates an infinite and baffling series of reflections. Its much like being between two mirrors in a fancy hotel elevator, only without the eventual curve into grainy dissolution; he can literally see into the far, deep pit of the eternity inside him, one slightly-more-warped reflection at a time.

The first time it happened, not long after he put the eye in his skull, he stared at himself for days on end, and had to be roughly pushed out of the way to break the spell. Since then, it's only happened a few times, and he's usually been able to pull himself out of it after an hour or two. So he closes his eye to shave, doesn't bother with rear view mirrors when driving, and if he has to argue with himself, he does it while looking into whatever he's drinking at the time.

And he is almost always drinking something.

* * *

The President of the United States of America drinks water as he stands before the bathroom mirror. Two glasses a day, every day, right after he gets up and before he takes his shower. It re-hydrates, gets the digestive system working, and makes sure his vitamins get absorbed correctly.

And, recently, he's been using it to center himself, and hold onto his true identity in spite of everything that's happened. 

He looks at himself in the mirror as he does this, observing the false Asian face he's been wearing since he got to China. He does not like it. He looks like a weird amalgam of his own features and something else. Maybe someone he could have met in his childhood, in Malaysia.

Sometimes, he imagines that he's not the one doing these things, here. All the questionable things he's done since he teamed up with SPYGOD to save America -- to save the world, for that matter -- have been done by this strange character he sees in the mirror. It's been his hands shaking hands with the most powerful man in China. His lips making poisoned promises.

His fingers to be around the trigger of the gun that kills him, today.

He doesn't like having to do this. He knew it was a possibility -- possibly even an eventuality -- but he'd allowed himself to hope that, when it was all over, they could all just go their separate ways and say nothing of it. What would it matter if the leaders of two nations worked together to save the world from an invasion? What did they really do that was so terrible that it might later turn into blackmail or extortion?

But no. I would appear that the Imago have found out what he knows, somehow. They know that he told them about the lockup of information gleaned from Unit 731. They know why that's relevant, and why SPYGOD is in Russia, right now. They have even tried to kill SPYGOD, there, to stop him.

And if they choose to press their hand, Wen might tell them that the President of the United States is in the country, working alongside him. And that would be very bad for everyone involved.

Especially the President.

So today, when the man walks from his apartments to their house of government, as the President knows he will, he will be waiting for him, with a very powerful gun. He will assassinate him from a few football fields away, and then get as far away from Beijing as he can.

And hope it's enough.

He looks at this strange man in the mirror. He remembers the time that, when he wore his own face, he ordered young men and women to go and kill in the name of their country. He wonders if they, too, had some kind of similar ritual, or if they took full personal responsibility for the terrible but necessary things they did for their country.

The man in the mirror doesn't have an answer. Just an alien expression that's going to haunt his wearer for the rest of his life.

* * *

The Ex-President of Russia does not look at himself in the mirror. Not once. Not ever.

* * *

"Alright, President !@#$face," SPYGOD says at some point, pretending to look at his watch: "It's time."

"I suppose it is," his guest says, getting to his feet. He looks terrible, frankly: puffy and red-eyed, with some nasty bruises around his face. Too many transpistol shots over too many days have turned his muscles brittle, and liable to snap and bleed. 

But that part of the journey is done, now. No more reverse gender assaults on his person. He needs to be who and what he is for this next bit to work. 

"Do you remember how to get there?" SPYGOD asks as they step out into the corridor of the unlit tunnel, apparently not worried about all the large, nasty-looking spiders that crawl over the damp and crumbling walls. 

"I do," the ex-President of Russia says: "We go left at the next junction, then right, and then left. And then we walk for some time."

"Any security we need to worry about?"

"No. Not down this deep. The only things you could find down here without someone like myself along would be supply closets and empty rooms."

"Well, good thing I've got you, huh?" SPYGOD smiles, gesturing with his flashlight: "You first."

"I would like a flashlight."

"I would like a billion rubles, ten ladyboys, and a steak the size of a card table. Start !@#$ing walking or I'll drag your sorry !@#$ behind me."

 

"Very well. But if I slip and fall-"

 

"Listen !@#$-o," SPYGOD hisses, grabbing the man by the lapel and yanking him uncomfortably close: "All I need to get into this room is directions and one of your eyes. I got the one, and the other doesn't need to be in your !@#$ head, now does it?"

 

There's a moment of silence as the two men look at each other, and then the ex-President nods, and, as soon as SPYGOD lets go of him, walks forward into the darkness, doing his best to stay in the splash of light his captor's flashlight provides.

 

There is nothing to do but walk, now. And if he knows he's going to his death, he's doing it rather bravely. 

 

But that will not deter his killer -- not one !@#$ bit. 

 

* * *

 

In Beijing, not too far from the houses of government, there's a building. In that building is a room with a window that, if you strained your eyes just so, you could almost see a decent amount of a certain walkway from. 

 

And if you had a high-powered rifle scope, you could see that walkway perfectly, and have quite a decent amount of visible space to set up a good killshot.

The President of the United States of America sits there, in that building, in that window, with the rifle in his hands and his eyes in that scope. 

Thanks to the emergency call box they gave Wen Boxiong, all that time ago, he knows that the man is on the move. He knows he and his small security detail will be in sight in a minute or so. And he knows that, with this gun, and the ammunition in it, he only needs one good shot to destroy the man from the neck-up, robbing the Imago of the ability to use his dead brain for any information.

He knows these things, but he does not like them. He also does not like that he planted a bomb back at his apartment that will not only destroy his rooms, but might also cause a fire that will bring the whole building down. He likes that he only needs to press a button to set it off remotely, but he knows that when the moment comes, he'll probably hesitate a few seconds, wondering if he should call in a threat first so that the building is evacuated.

 

He does not like knowing that, in spite of that hesitation, he will press it, anyway. His training is too strong for moral objections, now. What they have to do is too important to waste time or sentiment over. 

There is nothing to do but kill, now. And as he waits for the General Secretary of China to step into his field of fire, he feels like a !@#$ coward.

But that will not deter him. Not in the slightest. 

(SPYGOD is listening to The Figurehead (The Cure) and having a Толстяк)

9/30/12 - Bodies In Motion - Pt. 3 - Toys as Tall as Men

The room is dark -- lit only in patches -- and full of strange things, all promising pleasure and pain.

A naked, pudgy man hangs from the ceiling, suspended by straps and chains. An older woman stands in front of him, wearing a one-piece suit so white it almost has a light of its own. 

"Listen to me," the woman is whispering into the man's ear, while holding his !@#$ so hard that it's a wonder it doesn't explode in her hand like a ripe, pulpy tomato: "What we do is secret. What we do is safe. I will show you things you can never believe, but must never reveal. And in return, you will do what I want, whenever I want, so long as you may live."

She squeezes his manhood just that much harder, and blood begins to dribble from it: "Do you understand?" she hisses.

"Yes..." a much younger Wen Boxiong says, lost in the ecstasy of this one moment-

* * *

It's morning in Beijing, and an older, much larger Wen Boxiong wakes to find a hauntingly familiar scent in the air.

He blinks and rises, wondering if it's just something from a dream. But then he inhales deeply, and realizes that the smell isn't something he's imagined. It is all too real.

It is her.

He looks over at the table by his bed, where he keeps his glasses and teeth. A small, delicately-folded note sits there, tucked right under his glasses.

He puts them on and opens it up without hesitation, and with all due haste. As he reads the words he gasps, and holds his hand to his mouth. His eyes close tightly, and he knows fear and arousal in near-equal measure.

The Botanical Garden, the note instructs: Noon. Alone. 


She doesn't need to sign it. He knows her handwriting and style of delivery all too well. And if that wasn't enough, the scent of her perfume is unique in the world.

The Lady of Pain has come back to see him, and tonight he will either know love or death.

* * *

On a day like today, there is no time to be hesitant.

He changes his entire schedule, including his after-dinner meeting with the American President in disguise. He tells his security detail that they will accompany him on a tour of the city, but that they are to leave him after a certain point, and yet continue to radio in that he is with them. He will rejoin them at his residence, later, and they are to tell no one of this.

He picks out a suitable disguise, like the American President taught him to. A reversible coat, a ballcap, and bad shoes will make him look like an entirely different man, and the special contact lenses he pockets will confuse any optical scanners. 

(He mulls bringing the small, boxlike emergency communicator his new allies have given him, but decides to leave it back here; if she finds it on him, it's unlikely he will survive the encounter.)

He makes certain that various things are seen to, around his official apartment. There are some secrets that may come to light after his disappearance, or death, and he cannot control them. But there are other secrets that he can control, and these are hidden in such a way that his new allies will find them. Hopefully they will know what to do with these things, but if they don't, then it will no longer be any of his concern.

All that done, he takes his leave of the place -- possibly for the last time -- gets into a waiting car with his security detail, and prepares himself to do something he thought he'd never have to do again.

Not since she spurned him, anyway. 

* * *

The hasty plan goes better than he had hoped. 

He ditches his security team on cue, in a place where he knows the security cameras are broken and the advertisements old and useless, and they do not so much as blink an eye. He slips into a public restroom that isn't used that much, locks himself into a toilet stall, and changes his clothing. He puts the contacts in, hating the sting of them, but consoling himself that having red eyes will make him just that much less recognizable to others.

The change done, he goes out into public a different man, unworthy of special attention. He strides meekly and humbly through the crowded streets of the city, pretending to marvel at the new devices being installed on streetcorners and tall buildings, and be reverent to the Imago who float nearby, watching.

It's an educational journey. He almost gets pickpocketed waiting for a light. Older women make eyes at him and younger men sneer in his direction. When he gets onto the bus for the gardens, he only sits for two stops before he's impolitely urged to rise and remain standing so that some other, high party people he knows only by reputation can sit down.

(He amuses himself with how funny it would be to reveal his identity to them. It doesn't quite make up for how rude their minder is, but that can be dealt with another time. Hopefully.)

After all that, the actual ride to the gardens is quick and tidy -- almost anticlimactic. He gets there, pays to be let in just like any other person, and walks through the new, large security gate they placed there. No one calls or shouts after him as he walks through it, so it would appear the contacts work exactly as advertised.

But somehow that does not make him feel very secure.

* * *

The Lady did not tell him where they would meet, but he has a good idea where to find her. 

The tomb of Liang Qichao and his wife is in the northeast part of the garden. It's as much of a tourist attraction as any, but people tend to go there in small knots and clusters, if at all. It makes it a good place for two people to meet and have a quiet conversation while pretending to be admiring the scenery.

As he approaches, for a moment he finds himself hoping that she will not be there. Part of him hopes that this has all been a mistake -- maybe some kind of weird joke on his other ally's part -- and that he will get there, and be surprised to find that man instead, perhaps dressed as a woman. Or maybe this is some practical test on the American President's part, both to see how Wen would react to such a thing, and to ask him about that one, black secret in his new contact's somewhat-checkered past...

But no. He doesn't need to get more than halfway to the pavilion before he sees her there, resting up against a structure and looking right at him. She's dressed in a white coat with a long, round hat, and smoking a black cigarette on a long, white stem.

And she is as beautiful and terrible as ever.

He smiles. She does not smile back. He drops the smile and walks towards her, hoping this will be over quickly.

"You are late," the woman says as soon as he gets within earshot, her accent betraying a German heritage.

"The bus took longer-"

"No excuses, Wen Boxiong. I expect promptness, or have you forgotten?"

"I have not forgotten," he says: "But you told me never to expect to see you again."

"That is still no excuse for being late," she says, tapping her cigarette out. The smell of it excites his senses -- sweet, earthy tobacco with just the slightest hint of something else.

"No, it is not. I am sorry."

She smiles, puts her cigarette holder away, and pats his cheek: "I accept your apology. I am sure you were just confused, after all these years. You clearly have forgotten a few things."

"And some things I have not forgotten," he says, holding his hand to where she touched him: "And never will."

"I am glad to hear that," she says, taking his other hand in hers: "I am sure you were hurt by how I ended things."

"Yes," he admits.

"And I am sure that, being hurt, you were angry."

"I could not be-"

"Do not lie to me, Wen," she says, squeezing the hand in all the right spots to create an intense flare of pain: "You never could then and you cannot now."

"Yes," he admits, yanking his hand away and holding it: "I was angry. I still am."

"But you came, anyway."

"If I did not come, then the next time I saw you there would be no chance to talk."

"No," she says, smiling: "I suppose not. Do you still fear me?"

"Yes."

"Do you still want to fuck me?"

That word. The way she says "!@#$," like it had just been invented and unveiled for the first time. A million sense-memories exploding in his mind, like fireworks. Pain and pleasure, completion and rejection, love and hate. 

Having it all and then watching it leave him.

"Yes," he breathes, closing his eyes and letting her scent overtake him.

"Well then," she says, turning and indicating that he should follow: "That's a start, at least."

* * *

They walk in silence, for a time, until they are all alone on a path.

She lets him kiss her, then -- hard on the mouth. She places his hands under her coat, revealing that she's not wearing anything under it. She lets him explore her, there, under her coat, his hands and heart building to an amazing crescendo of desire.

And then, just as he might be wanting to pull out his !@#$ and put it inside her, she jabs a very long, very thin, glass needle right under his breastbone, and into his heart.

He gasps in surprise, but not pain. Oddly enough there is no pain, any more than there is blood.

But the look in her eyes is terrifying. There is no love or warmth there, anymore. Merely hate.

"You betrayed me," she states, simply: "You took the thing that I gave you and gave it to another."

"Yes," he says, knowing that it would not be a good idea to lie, right now.

"You told an outsider about what was locked down in those files I gave you dominion over."

"Yes... I did-"

"I want you to tell me why you did this."

He hesitates for a moment, and she nudges the glass needle ever so slightly. The pain it produces is explosive, and for a second he almost screams. But she clamps her other hand over his mouth before he can, somehow holding him up and in place with just one arm.

"No lies," she says: "Nothing held back. It is not yet too late for you to live through this. But I want you to tell me everything, even if I do not ask for it. Do you understand?"

He nods. Oh yes, does he ever understand.

And as soon as she takes her hand from his mouth, he tells her everything she wants to know.

* * *

Later, when Wen Boxiong gets back to his apartment, he only gets as far as his living room before he falls to his knees and vomits. He does this for what seems like hours, wracked by horrible chest pain as he does. And when he has thrown up everything in his gullet he cries and sobs for what seems hours more.

He told her everything. He told her about the American President. He told her about SPYGOD. He told her about their interest in Unit 731. 

!@#$ him to !@#$, he even told her why they wanted to know.

And when it was all done, and there was no more left to tell, she just looked at him, pulled the needle out of his heart as swiftly as she'd pushed it in, and left him to writhe in pain on the path.

"You will never see me again," she said, licking the blood from the needle: "I won't bother to kill you. You have done a good enough job of that already."

"Please..." he whimpered, holding out a hand: "I love you..."

"You do not even know what that word means," she hissed, stamping her foot onto his chest. He screamed and collapsed into a ball, mewling in pain. And when he finally came to, she was long gone.

No, he will never see her again. He knows this. And it would have been kinder if she'd just killed him.

But she might tell the Imago of what she now knows. She might want to do a deal with them. She may want to bring the entire arrangement crashing down around Wen Boxiong's head.

Can he tell the President? Should he? Does he dare risk SPYGOD's anger?

He doesn't know what to do, now, except to cry.

And so he does.

* * *

On the outskirts of Beijing, late that night, a woman in a white coat looks up at the sky, focusing on the stars.

Inside the city, you can't see a !@#$ thing, up above all the reflected light. Even out here it's hard to make it all out, with the clouds and smog. But at least it's a better view than in there, and even that's a better view than she'd have ever gotten back home.

Home. It seems a million lifetimes ago, now. She thinks of everything about it that she's missed, and tried to replicate here, and finds herself tearing up a little.

So she closes her eyes on her tears, and opens her mind up.

Are you there, my love? she asks her partner, who, though he may be halfway around the world from her, is always just one directed thought away: (REDACTED), are you there?

I am, Geri Yesterday, comes the languorous reply: I am a little busy, though. The three toys I brought back to my room are proving to be most distracting.

I'm sure, she says, luxuriating in the sensual backwash she's getting from the edges of his mind: But please, lover, don't call me that, anymore. That role is done, now. 

As mine should be-

Not quite, she thinks, feeling his pleasure as he watches the life slip slowly from one of his "toys": I have just learned some disturbing things from one of my old tools. 

Let me guess, lover, he replies: my damn twin is still in play, after all?

Yes, she says, somehow not surprised that he knew this, or kept this knowledge from her: And he's learned about the connection between the people we bargained with and the information that was hidden here, in China. 

I think he's learned about the Object, too, he says, sensing her curiosity at his motives, and doing his best to block them from her: He may have an idea on how they all fit together.

That could be a problem.

I don't fucking think so. So what if he destroys these metal-clad aliens? We'll still get what we need-

I'm not convinced. They may not have told us everything we need to know to make the device work. And if he manages to destroy them...

... then we won't know for certain until we activate it at home, he finishes her thought: That is a concern.

Especially since, once they're gone from this world, we won't have anywhere else to go if the device doesn't work.

You know, you really do know how to ruin a perfectly good artfuck, love, he sighs, killing the other two without much panache or pleasure: Where is (REDACTED)?

I do not know where your twin is. 

Find out for me?

I think you can find that out on your own, lover, she says, smiling: Consider it due payment for not telling me what you knew, before.

A fair price, he chuckles: Are you going to tell those metal fucks what you've learned, then? 

The line goes dead in his mind, and the SPYGOD from Alter-Earth shrugs, knowing that the !@#$ he's been sharing a mission -- and occasionally a bed -- with for almost an entire century will do whatever the !@#$ she's going to do.

As for him, he'll get on the trail of his unknowing enemy in the morning. But for now, there's art to make of these three, dead toys.

And he's not going to stop until he's convinced the most horror-hardened member of Capetown's police force will cry for hours after seeing what he's done with them.

(SPYGOD is listening to Splintered In Her Head (The Cure) and having a Naale Stoutbeer)

9/21/12 - How SPYGOD Saved Christmas

So it's a dreary-!@#$ morning in Beijing, now that we've gotten word of what's happened in LA.

The Imago are making it sound like my allies did this. They're all over the !@#$ing televisions, telling people that "Dangerous Persons" working with the threat from outer !@#$ing space are responsible. The Owl and Talon, in particular, which is just all kinds of !@#$ed up and wrong, considering.

To hear the Imago tell it, the Owl blew up a big !@#$ bomb in Hollywood just to say "!@#$ you, dirty Imago bastards. !@#$ you for trying to save the Earth from certain doom. And !@#$ you for being so noble, so righteous, so good... *sniff*"

Yeah, pass me the !@#$ing tissues, honey. That was no !@#$ bomb. That was a !@#$ing orbital pulse cannon, shot from Deep Ten. The same thing they used on 3/15 to knock the whole world down and make sure they couldn't launch a god!@#$ thing in retaliation.

I'm not entirely sure what the !@#$ my people might have been doing, there. Communication with that side of the pond's been a little spotty since I got back. I have it on good authority that things are under control, and that when I have a plan, they'll be ready to put it into action. But sometimes...

...

Eh, I don't know. And that's the real problem, here, son -- I don't !@#$ing know. 

I'm not in the direct loop with what's going on, here. My intel is !@#$. I get scraps every once in a while from interested parties, and snips and pieces from my !@#$ing drunk of a cat when the worthless ball of fur can bother to put down the vodka and !@#$ing drop me a note.

But the !@#$ satellites are gone, son. The internet is a !@#$ing trap. And while I can hear more than I can understand and see more than I can bear, putting it all together's kind of hard, right now.

I've lost control, son. Power gives you control, and knowledge is power, and right now I don't !@#$ing have it that control because I don't have the power that knowledge gives me. And that !@#$ing scares me, son. You would not believe how much that scares me.

!@#$, it scares me almost as much as !@#$ing time travel does.

Yeah, I figure by now you know why. But you don't understand that unless you really live it. It takes some really specialized and terrible knowledge to understand that, at any given moment, the entire pattern of reality might !@#$ing re-arrange around you like a bad dream because some !@#$head with more tech than sense went back to whatever-whatever BC and shot King Darius in the brains before he could sire Alexander.

And that's fear, son. That's being truly and properly !@#$ing frightened.

Now, some good news on that regard is that it's not nearly as easy to !@#$ things up as you might think.

For one thing, as I think I mentioned, the last time we talked about this, most people who have the knowhow to make a !@#$ing time machine in the first place are generally !@#$ scared to do it, much less use it. And that's because it's a well-documented fact that time travel is more like Quantum Leap than The Terminator, and that even a slight, small jaunt backwards in time is liable to cause all kinds of !@#$ing headaches and changes.

For another thing, you can't just put a time machine together using !@#$ you boosted from a radio shack. It requires some very expensive equipment, along with some rare elements, and you have to have some really crazy expensive tools to put it together. And then you have to !@#$ing power the !@#$ thing, which is an interesting hurdle in itself...

And for yet another thing, you know how we've had !@#$ing legions of psychics and telepaths working in various places, watching for certain things, and heading off certain threats? Well, we've also had chronologically sensitive psychics in place since the 50's, right along with them. They all sit in a room, watching the walls in shifts around the clock, writing down whenever they feel that someone's engaged in a little time-!@#$ing.

(Which happens more often than you'd like to think, but mostly for other reasons, which maybe I'll talk about another !@#$ing time.)

Yeah, son. Back in the day, various governments had whole !@#$ing rooms of Timekeepers employed to monitor the time stream, just to make sure that no one was going to !@#$ up reality from behind. And sometimes they managed to give us plenty of warning, but not always. Sometimes even they didn't have enough time.

And then we were in the !@#$, and it was up to whatever Strategic Talents were !@#$ing available to rush back there and stop whatever the !@#$ was going on... Ah, good times, son. Good times.

Yeah, son, it does sound like I've been thinking about this a lot, doesn't it? Well, no wonder there. After yesterday's bad bit of news from America, the President's been all weepy. And he's been right up my !@#$ with a spoon to try and get me to divulge some brown nugget of hope and cheer, or maybe something that'll make all this go away.

But there's only one thing you'll get if you go up my tailpipe with a spoon, son, and that's !@#$. Or maybe a reacharound if you're looking to make SPYGOD happy, today. But generally speaking, unless you are very well-hung Katooey, and I'm in the mood to catch rather than pitch, there's nothing in my !@#$ but the dark truth.

And that's that when !@#$ like this happens, all you can do is soldier through, and plan for justice, and vengeance, and victory. That and payback.

Massive. !@#$ing. Payback.

...

Oh, but yeah, let's talk about the President, because it's kind of funny.

You see, he actually asked me if there was any way we could just go back in a machine and stop all this !@#$ from happening. And I was about to smack him upside the head like I was !@#$ing Batman or something, but then I remembered that, for all the training we did, recently, I never told him about certain key facts of life. You know, like everything I just !@#$ing talked about.

(No, son, Presidents don't get told everything when they get into the Oval Office. They do get a folder of certain secrets that they really !@#$ing need to know, now, but everything else stays secret up until it's absolutely needed to know. And how often we've almost been !@#$ed by time traveling terrorists is not something they need to know about, because they !@#$ing have enough to worry about as it is.)

So I sat him down and explained the whole thing to him. I told him that not only would we need to find a time machine, and power the !@#$ thing, but then we'd have to have someone along for the ride who knew exactly what the !@#$ happened, so we'd know what to fix. We'd also have to have people back here in the present, who could be shielded from changes in the time stream, and they'd have to be in constant communication with us, so they could !@#$ing tell us if we were doing it right or not.

And then we'd have to be doing this with the Imago running up our !@#$es, and trying to stop us from doing it, which made the chances of pulling off a successful time-changing really !@#$ing remote. Not to mention the fact that there are other forces at work, out there, who might be even less keen on our !@#$ing around with time and space and all that !@#$.

Now, after I gave him that impassioned speech, which I only had to punctuate with threatened slaps and gun barrels once or twice, he was convinced that he'd been talking out his !@#$, and letting the grief and shock go to his head, and was pretty !@#$ well put off the idea. So I let him go off to have another talk with our new, favorite Harold and hopefully get his !@#$ mind of that whole !@#$ing thing for a while.

But it got me thinking about other times that I've had to go back and fix time with only a quarter of those resources, and more than a few odds against me. And I realized, after a few beers, that we probably could go back in time and stop all this !@#$ from happening, except that we don't have Shift, anymore.

However, having said all of that, I can indeed confirm that there was one time that I managed to fix a massive disruption to the timestream with only a few pieces of reliable intel, a jetpack, and a large, loaded gun.

How did I do that, you ask? Well, that's a funny !@#$ story. Let me set the scene for you, here...

Imagine that it's 1984. Rappin Ronnie is President of the United States of America, and the understanding with the Backers is in full swing. This also means that certain things have been dialed down or swept under the rug, and we're all having to get used to the fact that we've gone from fabulous to frumpy, !@#$ing overnight. The hippies are now yuppies, disco has been replaced by synthpop, and everyone looks and sounds like something off of Miami !@#$ing Vice.

Great times, huh? Well, you don't know the half of it. I dressed flashy and people !@#$ing loved it, and I could shoot someone five hundred !@#$ing times and only have to fill out one lousy piece of paperwork. Car chases were hip, massive destruction was A-OK, and everything could be excused or explained as long as it was done to keep the Russians at bay.

So there I am, driving through New York City in a Lamborghini as pink as a !@#$ing flamingo, wearing sunglasses two times as large as necessary, a pastel blue shirt under a pastel orange jacket, and a skinny black tie that just screamed "!@#$hole on the dance floor."

I've just shot one dumb !@#$ for talking to the Soviets, and terminally inconvenienced some other dumb !@#$ for not talking to them, and I'm on my way to see another dumb !@#$ to see which way he's gonna jump if I ask him if he is or isn't, or will or won't. Or maybe I'm going to go find a ladyboy and get !@#$ing laid. Who can say?

But I get a call from the Heptagon, instead. And this is back when our communicators looked like !@#$ing flip-up cell phones do now, rather than the crazy, big box and an antenna car phones everyone else was !@#$ing using back then, so I wasn't nearly as !@#$ing inconspicuous but still wishing no one could see me actually talking on the !@#$ phone. You never know who might be paying !@#$ing attention.

Case in point, no sooner do I pick up the phone than some !@#$er takes a shot at me. High velocity sniper round, being fired from three skyscrapers away. I hear the shot coming before he's even !@#$ing fired it and swerve to avoid it, but of course that means the poor !@#$hole right behind me is toast.

So I floor the car, hit the ejection seat, and leap up into the jetpack that comes standard in these COMPANY sports cars. By the time I'm airborne the shooter's about half done packing his weapon and getting ready to run, so !@#$ if he isn't surprised to see me up on the rooftop, flying right for him, with a big !@#$ing gun of my own pointed in his direction.

A little while later, we've been properly introduced, and he's going on and on about how Soviets will destroy western capitalism, and we're doomed, and blah blah !@#$ing blah. Turns out he's from SQUASH and can't keep his !@#$ing mouth shut, but doesn't have anything really important or intelligent to say, other than he was supposed to kill my fine gay !@#$.

So I'm about to toss him over the edge of the !@#$ing roof when he finally lets slip why they wanted to try and kill me that night. Apparently, something really !@#$ big was about to go down, that night, and they wanted to get me the !@#$ out of the way before it happened, so I couldn't stop it.

What might that have been? Well, he didn't know. So of course I dropped him over the edge, but right about then I get another !@#$ing call from the Heptagon, as the last one got cut off, and this time they're a little more insistent about my needing to come in. Apparently our Timekeepers are all tearing out their feathered and frosted hair and insisting that something !@#$ing crazy is about to happen to the structure of time, but they don't know what.

"The king is gone" is all they keep saying, in creepy unison like demon kids from a bad horror movie: "The king is gone. The king is gone."

Well, okay, but what does that mean? Is someone going to go back in time and kill a king? If so, who? Charlemagne? Henry VIII? George? Arthur?

Of course, they have !@#$ing idea. But I realize that SQUASH is involved, and they're wanting to destroy Western Civilization, and that leads me to believe that...

Well, okay, I still !@#$ing got nothing. So I call the Flier for a pickup, make sure the NYPD don't ticket or impound my !@#$ car, and start my COMPANY Agents looking into all the people we know who might have access to timejump materials. After a very panicky half hour, they get me a list of three names, all of whom are on the Eastern seaboard, but two of whom are between NYC and DC.

(Of course, I have someone fly down to !@#$ing Georgia to kick in the doors of Professor Chronograph, who, as it turned out, wasn't trying to !@#$ with historical events, that night, but was actually playing Bridge with a fellow nudist couple. One of the ladies had a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital, in the nude, and we got !@#$ing sued for half a million dollars. Not our greatest moment.)

I head to DC, and it's a bust. Empty warehouse full of dust, grime, and bad memories of kicking mad scientist !@#$ there about ten years earlier. So I have the Flier take me back to NYC, whereupon I crash into the offices of one Griselda Rodriquez De La Hora, who was notorious for selling high tech weapons and equipment to people we'd really rather weren't in possession of such nasty !@#$.

Is she there? Sort of. Poor woman's dead, and has been for some time. She was shot right through the eyes and left to die. But she managed to do two things before things went black, one of which was to write a series of numbers on the floor in her own blood, and the other was to grab her Bible and clutch it to her chest.

(!@#$ Catholic supervillains. Go !@#$ing figure.)

The numbers I couldn't make sense of, but one of my Agents figured out that it was a phone number. Problem was, it was missing its area code, but after going through a few phone books we figured that there was a really good chance it was in the 917, which led to an office building we'd suspected of being a Soviet front for quite some time.

So she wrote down the phone number of the person she'd been in touch with? Nice touch if it was true, but the last I heard from the Heptagon the Timekeepers were strangling themselves and dying from exhaustion, and that could only mean that the whole !@#$ing world was going to do a dive if we didn't act now. So I leaped out of the !@#$ing office window, jumped onto a jetpack they'd sent out for me, and rocketed over to Astoria as fast as I !@#$ing could.

I get there, and there's lights on in the penthouse. I smash through the penthouse window, and there's some !@#$hole standing over what is clearly a large time-space apparatus, designed to send non-living things, like cameras and probes, back through time and space. There's a large metal box in the machine, and the things' counting down.

The moment I crash through the window, the jerk in the red suit realizes he's !@#$ed and tries to speed up the countdown. I shoot him through the !@#$ing heart and rush over there, just in time to stop what he was doing and turn the !@#$ing thing off. He falls down, gurgling blood and proclaiming the eventual downfall of western decadent capitalism in the face of pure Soviet excellence. Me, I kick his jaw off so he dies quieter.

Right about then, I realize that the room's all lit up like a disco, only it's not. That's what the Chandra Eye shows me when there's a lot of !@#$ing radiation nearby. I also realize that the dumb !@#$ I just killed is burned and scarred from what is clearly radiation damage, as though he'd been sucking on an ingot of P-239 for a couple days.

Sure enough, I open the box and get a nasty blast of radiation. I slam the !@#$ing lid down fast enough to avoid passing out, but as I sit the !@#$ down I realize that the walls of the box were thick lead, the device inside it was clearly a crude nuclear bomb, and I may have just saved somewhere from being !@#$ing obliterated.

I look at the timer and the controls, up there, blinking away. I can't quite make out the coordinates, but the date's reading 0000. I wonder what the !@#$ that means for a second or two, and then the radiation damage is healed up enough to make me realize that I should !@#$ing call it in.

And when I do, and have the Agent on the other end find out where the !@#$ 31 42 11 N 35 11 44 E is. He takes a moment, and gets back to me to tell me it's !@#$ Bethlehem.

Suddenly 0000 makes a whole lot of sense. Especially when they tell me that the surviving Timekeepers aren't going !@#$ing crazy, anymore.

And that, son, is how SPYGOD saved Christmas.

...

What? You expected something like off of Charlie !@#$ing Brown? Well !@#$ you, son. You just don't know a real Christmas miracle when it stands up and offers you a quickie.

Yeah, get out, kid. Go have a day or something. I need to see if I can get in touch with something that can get me in touch with California, and see if we can't adjust this knowledge power control equation a little more to my liking.

It's all I want for Christmas, son. And !@#$ if Santa isn't going to make with the goods this year...

(SPYGOD is listening to Send me an Angel (Real Life) and having an Old Fezziwig Ale )