11/6/11 - They Are Legion - pt.5

Yeah, back to the ellipse. No point going any further. I think the grand tour's coming to a close, now.

See those cops? I think they're wondering who !@#$ on the Boy Scout Memorial. The real question is why don't more people do exactly that? God-awful !@#$ thing...

You okay, son? No? Yeah, well, sit down over here on the bench. Been a long day. Not quite over yet.

We're still on the hunt for someone, after all. Someone's going to die, soon. Just have to wait for the right moment.

That's 9/10s of this !@#$ job, you know. Waiting. Just sitting down on your !@#$ and reloading your gun over and over and !@#$ over until it's time to snap to and use it.

They say it's a good thing, because the longer you wait the longer you plan, and the longer you plan the better that plan is. I've never really bought that. I think there's something to be said for just being ready to do the obvious thing, or the non obvious thing, anyway.

Either that or having three plans ready to go at once so that, if one fails, your fine gay !@#$ is covered several times over. Worked on GORGON that one time, anyway.

Worked for the Legion, too. All that waiting, all that planning, all that maneuvering their people into the right places at the right time.

It's actually pretty admirable, until you know who's behind it, and what they're doing it for.

* * *

So, the plan.

Smoke? No? Probably just as well. You're looking a little green, there, son.

So, it's like I said, son. Strange things happen in wartime. There's stuff the Wehrmacht threw at us that was never recovered from the battlefield. There's secret weapons they rolled out that never came back. There's scientists and technicians of theirs that were supposed to be assassinated or repatriated that just vanished and were never found.

And that's just the Axis. We had loads of things go missing as well. !@#$ boatloads of the stuff, just gone.

Now, after any war, there's a lot of hand-wringing, weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth about missing ordinance. People get yelled at and heads roll, and sometimes careers even come to a !@#$ halt if they prove you were responsible. But it's all pretty much for show. You can't unfire a gun full of stolen bullets, after all.

And in the fog of war, well, lots of crazy, !@#$ up things happen. It happens in any war, really. But it happened a lot more in The War.

Ever wonder where it all went? I'll tell you. It went from this hand, here, into this hand, over here. Just like this cigarette.

Who was responsible? The Left Handed Legion. They had a chain of repatriation taking things from Europe and the Pacific all the way back to Canada and Mexico, and then back into the US of A. From there the items went into one of several warehouses, located all over the Continental.

And they waited there for years, until the War was over and the masquerade was done with it. And then they got busy getting nasty, and might have gotten away with it for a long time if it hadn't been for one !@#$ bomb.

Which bomb? Some crazy !@#$ super-thing that was supposed to be dropped on Dresden just vanished out of its crate at its hangar. No idea what happened, so we blame German saboteurs. A couple spies get taken out back and shot in retaliation, and the firebombing of Dresden happens as planned, minus one massive mother!@#$ piece of ordinance.

People die, more people live, Kurt Vonnegut lucks out, life goes on.

Then one day in 1966 we get a phone call telling us that there's a bomb in a truck parked in downtown Chicago. And when we get there, and start trying to defuse the !@#% thing, we find out it's a near-exact copy of that missing bomb.

And then we find out that there's another one just like it halfway across town, and another one in Queens, and another one in !@#$ LA, and yet another one in mother !@#$ Miami, all primed to go off five minutes after the other.

And then, after dealing with that !@#$ emergency, we find out that it was the handiwork of someone named Firebug. I guess the ransom note that didn't get delivered until it was too late due to a post office !@#$up put a crimp in that plan.

Come to find out Firebug was a villain back in the 30's who strangely vanished just before we started sneaking aid over to Europe before The War. Also come to find out that while we found out who he was, the first time he got arrested, we had no idea how he might have died. It was like he just turned a corner and poof, gone.

But then this is us, and you know us. No body, no death. And even then you can't take it for granted. Look at The Big Man.

So the COMPANY gets on the case. We start rousting likely hideouts for a grade-A explosives expert who's got access to blueprints for a top secret bomb that went missing during The War. And when we finally find the !@#$, three months and two more nationwide bomb threats later, we find out that it's the exact same person who was the Firebug back in the 30's, just older.

We also find out he's been living under an assumed name, with new ID and credentials, since the end of The War. He's even got a handful of fake birth certificates.

Fortunately, his attempt to commit suicide by mechanically assisted self combustion only half-works, which makes interrogating him a lot easier. After a few days he gives up the goods, if only to make us stop putting him in front of a wall of open flame.

(I'm sure you've noticed that hurts like unholy !@#$ when you've got a bad burn.)

So what does Marty K. Eisner, aka Gerald C. Samson, aka Firebug, have to say for himself?

Well, turns out The Big Man called him and a bunch of other supervillains together in 1939, maybe six months before he sent Roosevelt that letter. He gave them the option of getting on the ground floor of the greatest American criminal enterprise in history. Not only were they all going to walk out of where they were, now, smelling like roses, but they'd be poised to get back into the limelight from a position of strength that they couldn't even conceive of, now.

The best part of it all? The American Government was going to help them. As long as they did what he told them, how and when he told them, and were willing to pretend to go legit for a little less than ten years, they'd be better off than they could imagine.

Not everyone agreed, obviously. They were told they could leave. They didn't make it out of the building, though, and everyone else got the point. If they'd come to listen, they'd come to play. No exceptions.

So after doing some cleanups for The Big Man, most of which were fellow villains who weren't playing along, or were too unstable to have on the team, Firebug and some allies got in a van, went off to Oregon, and got turned into the best, most patriotic heroes you'd never heard of. They got the same kind of training that people like myself did at Camp Rogers, minus the genetic monkeyshines, and were sent off to go fight the Axis alongside us.

Of course, I wasn't believing a word of this !@#$. But then he started naming names, and a suddenly a lot of things that happened during the war made a lot of !@#$ sense.

Maybe too many.

But then he drops one more big one on us. Turns out he was just moonlighting with the bombs for extra cash. It turns out he's still been doing work for America, since the war, as part of his agreement to stay on the right side of the law while managing to break it on alternate weekends.

And you're just gonna !@#$ when I tell you who was involved.

No, we're done moving. We don't have to go any further than this, son. You just rest. 

(SPYGOD is listening to All Cats Are Grey (The Cure) and having something else)

11/5/11 - They Are Legion pt 4

And here we are, as promised. The White House. Or, at least, as close as they let most folks get these days.

(Hope you didn't mind the slight detour for the Boy Scout Memorial. I had to !@#$ after all those apple beers and it seems a very appropriate place. You know why.)

Ah, what a majestic sight, all lit up in the early evening. Just us and all these tourists, all being treated like potential terrorists. I could always go bum rush the gates and get us in, but I felt like being mildly ordinary today, even if we are on a hunt.

No, really. See? I brought my camera. Smile?

Ha! There we go. You oughta be in pictures, son. Hopefully not the kind where wake up halfway through and your mouth's been sewn to some Japanese guy's !@#$. Unless you're into that sort of thing. It's a free country, after all.

Yes it is. And it's free because so many people over the years have given their lives to keep it that way, both at home and abroad. So many young men and women dead, consigned to the earth or the sea. The good and the bad and the worst and the best, all gone down to their eternal rest... or something like that.

I must be getting maudlin. I'm quoting !@#$ Poe. Shoot me if I do that again, will you, son? Thank you.

Anyway, the White House. The British burned it, once. We vowed as a nation to never let that happen, again. It's stood firm through several wars since, mostly abroad. And after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and Hitler threatened us from the other side of the world, Roosevelt swore he'd do anything to make sure it stood firm again.

Even if it meant cooperating with the enemy at home.

After the agreement, there was some muted protest in and around Washington's power circles. A lot of angry and confused higher-ups at the War Department and intelligence services, mostly. "You mean we have to work with who?" was the question of the hour, and it was all Roosevelt could do to keep them from looking too closely at the fine print.

But Hoover? He was !@#$ furious. In fact, he almost quit, and the only reason he stayed was because the President wheeled into his office and personally begged him to reconsider.

I think the phrase he used was "I need my best man beside me when they try and go back on their word." That and a promise or two that maybe he shouldn't have made, and Hoover agreed to stay. For then.

That was the start of a new age for Superheroes and law enforcement, believe it or not. The Feds put the word out that the long underwear set were our new friends. All state and local law enforcement agencies should follow their lead and welcome their aid, when needed and where appropriate.

Hoover even did a film with The Spirit of Justice, if you can believe that. They shook hands, pledged cooperation, told a few jokes... all that good !@#$. Anything to make it crystal clear that the American Government was happy to have its home-grown heroes on its side, now that things in Europe were getting weird and uncomfortable.

What happened behind the camera's another story, though. But that's for another day, I think.

* * *

That goes on for a few years. The heroes are working with the cops against spies, saboteurs, fifth column types, outside agitators, commies, and all the usual suspects. They make the busts, the Feds swoop in and take them off for holding and interrogations, and everyone's happy to really be on the same team for once.

But the capes and spandex crowd's kind of puzzled about one thing: where did their villains go? Some of them stuck around, especially the would-be conquerors and !@#$ crazy ones. But most of them just vanished into thin air, and they can't all have been scared into early retirement by the change in the weather from Washington.

Of course, they haven't really gone anywhere. They're in camps around the country, being re-made by the War Department and their merchandising boys. Firebug became Torch of Liberty. Safecracker became Tanksmasher. The Sneak became Whisper of Freedom.

(The War Department started calling them the Left Handed Legion. I figure you can figure the rest from there)

But what about people like The Smiler and Bloody Mike? Well, son, they vanished for good, along with every other sicko, freak, and madman that The Big Man's boys got their hands on. The Big Man didn't like insane types. Probably because he had a much harder time controlling them.

He also did a vanishing job on the other people who were vying for a slice of the big pie. The Yellow Emperor in California, the Hidden Prophet in Colorado, even that southern-fried freak in Mississippi who thought he was king of the alligators. All gone down to their rest, never to be seen again.

You seeing how that chess game worked, son? Several moves in advance, and several pieces at once. 

* * *

So that's the end of the 30's and the start of the 40's. And you know what happens on December 7th of 1941.

The day after that, Roosevelt goes to congress and delivers one of the best speeches of his Presidency. We vote for war, the people rally around their leader, and our enemies start getting the idea that maybe, just maybe, they made a big !@#$ mistake.

The day after that, Roosevelt has them wheel out that black, two-way television set and talks to The Big Man. The time had come, as they'd known it would, and he needed Biggs to fulfill the larger part of their bargain.

He was afraid that the guy might have some additional conditions, now that they'd been working together for a few years. Surprisingly, he doesn't. In fact, to his relief, he even throws in a concession. He offers to take five percent of the worst criminals on his team and deal with them, personally, so that Roosevelt won't have to offer them pardons at the war's end.

Why the change of heart? "I like Hawaii, Mr. President," he says.

Yeah, there you go, wanting to barf again. And you're right to. It was bull!@#$.

Truth was, it was housekeeping, pure and simple. He'd kept tabs on who was taking too much advantage of the deal, or who'd been making power plays he didn't like. They got to vanish into thin air over the next few years, and the ones who remained got the message: play ball or don't play at all.

And he needed everyone to play ball. This was the critical bit of the plan. He needed everyone on his team to act like they wanted nothing more than to serve their country the best way they could. So they sucked it up, said "yes sir" and "no sir," and went overseas to fight the Axis.

But as you might well know, things get weird when you're overseas and fighting for your life. Things get stolen. People vanish. Your comrades go out for a !@#$ at night and never come back.

Treasure disappears. Advanced weaponry gets destroyed when no one's looking. Secrets fall into the wrong hands. Important people become casualties of war.

The Left Handed Legion's out doing their orders, but they've got two sets. One's from whatever military command they're attached to. The other's from The Big Man. And I bet you know which one's got top priority.

Makes you wonder what the end game is, huh? Well, get a move on, son. Let's take this show somewhere else and we'll discuss that. 

(SPYGOD is listening to M (The Cure) and having some more suspicious lemon lime soda)

11/4/11 - They Are Legion pt 3

Oh, well, would you look at that? I lied again. We're at the FBI Building after all. Doesn't it look marvelous?

No? Well keep your !@#$ opinions to yourself on that one. I knew the architect, and he was under orders to make the building match the man. So apparently J. Edgar Hoover was a grid. Who knew?

You know, they keep wanting to take John's name off it. Can't blame 'em, after all the bad news about what he'd been doing came out, after he died. I mean, who knew he was such a nasty piece of work? Other than everyone who worked for or alongside him, that is.

But I don't think so. I won't let 'em. For all the bad he did a lot more good. Say what you want about his mistakes, bad character, and distinct lack of ethics at times, but the FBI is a world class investigative body. And he's the man who made it that way.

Besides, you gotta love someone who kept just about every President since Calvin Coolidge so !@#$ scared of him that they just let him do whatever the !@#$ he wanted. Remind you of anyone you know?

Fear. It's a good thing to instill in others. That's why I wanted to take you here, actually. Because if we want to talk about The Big Man, we gotta talk about fear

To most god-fearing, American law enforcement personnel, Gilbert M Biggs was the devil. It wasn't because he was particularly evil, though he did some really !@#$ up !@#$ in his time. It was because he had three things going for him.

Thing number one, he was a walking inhibition and morality destroyer. He could literally take the most pious and kindhearted person you knew and, one conversation later, get them to do the most !@#$ up, heinous things without even a second thought.

So if you wanted to knock over a bank, he could talk someone on the inside into easing the way for the gang. He could talk city council members into passing crooked legislation. !@#$, he could get an Abbess to turn the local Nunnery into a whorehouse.

Fortunately, the effects of one conversation were short lived. Maybe a week at most. And they had to be done face-to-face, in person, which meant that Roosevelt was safe from being !@#$ with.

But the more you talked to him, the worse it got, and before you knew it the effects were !@#$ permanent. Every so often some hero would trip over some totally !@#$ up piece of human wreckage that used to be an upright citizen, and find out they'd spent some time with The Big Man.

Thing number two, the !@#$ could disappear. He'd get into an elevator and the car would be empty by the time it opened up on the top floor. He'd get into a car and never get out. He'd turn a corner and poof, gone.

And even if you did catch him, you still have to deal with thing number three. He couldn't !@#$ die. He'd been seen to be poisoned, shot to pieces, burned alive in a fire, dropped in a vat of acid, crashed in a plane, stepped on by a giant metal crocodile, or just flat out annihilated. And then he'd be back, good as new, not too long thereafter.

So I'm sure you can imagine what it must have been like for President Roosevelt to be having that conversation. It was like Billy Graham opening his door and having Marilyn !@#$ Manson standing there, offering to have all his Spooky kids drop whatever they were doing and go work for an otherwise-fubared Christian charity relief in Africa.

Well, okay. Maybe not the best comparison in the world, but hang around. I'll have better ones.

* * *

So what did The Big Man have to say for himself? !@#$ good question, son.

The offer was this: he knew that the President needed more super boots on the ground, both at home and abroad. He was willing to provide some of those boots, provided Uncle Sam didn't mind that they were a little dirty.

The Big Man offered to use his influence, if you know what I mean, to broker a truce between the supervillain community, which he claimed to be in charge of, and national law enforcement. The truce would involve the villains switching sides for the duration, at least up until the end of whatever war was coming.

During that time they would not engage in any illegal activity at home, in America. They would act as responsible and vigilant citizens, keeping an eye out for spies, saboteurs, and outside agitators. They'd even do their part to fight crime by going after the supervillains who didn't sign on with the deal.

And when the war came, they would volunteer their services for the war effort, and gladly be deployed wherever and whenever the War Department saw fit to see them. They'd work alongside their former hero nemeses and arch-rivals to keep America and her allies safe from whatever threats came their way.

The catch? At the end of it all, they walked, up to and including The Big Man. All charges dropped, all outstanding warrants shredded. So far as the law was concerned, anyone who played fair and square got a new start.

I think the ending words he used were "I'm a criminal, Mr. President. I make no apologies for that. But I'm an American first. Let me serve my country in her time of need, and in return I'll trouble her no more."

Yeah, enough to make you !@#$ puke. But there was something about all that bull!@#$ that had Roosevelt intrigued. All he had to do was weigh the option of less crime on the streets for the time being, another force looking for spies and saboteurs, and extra muscle when the war came, versus saying "no" and having to deal with them and foreign agents, some of whom were doubtlessly superpowered, and might be working with the supervillain community as they spoke.

All he had to do was think of a bunch of former supervillains who'd been persuaded to be good guys by The Big Man, all serving their country in its time of need.

He took a week, just for show, but it was a !@#$ foregone conclusion. The President said yes, and told The Big Man he had a chance to deliver. But he'd better not go back on his word.

And The Big Man said "I'm a man of my word, Mr. President. As of this day forward, we are all on the same side."

...

Yeah. Not the thing you want to hear after walking across town with a few of those dogs in your gut.

* * *

So I'm sure you're probably wondering, something, son. You're probably wondering "why can't he just go over to Europe, sneak into Hitler's bedroom, and talk him into being a good little boy? If he can't die, and he can vanish around corners, then how !@#$ hard can that be?"

And that's a !@#$ good question. The answer is something we don't figure out for years, afterward. It turns out The Big Man's power is even more insidious than you might have thought. It only works on a person if they're basically decent at heart, and not likely to do wrong, bad, evil, or totally !@#$ up things.

I mean, everyone's got a demon in them, but if you've got yours mostly under control, he can't do !@#$ to you. So Roosevelt was safer than he knew, as were most people in the room with him when those nasty videoconferences took place.

But that meant that every word The Big Man said about using his influence on the others was a total lie. They hadn't been forced into good behavior. They were just acting good, on pain of having something worse than death dropped on their heads if they blew the scheme.

And what was the scheme? Well, let's consider this. The Big Man has a fourth thing going for him. He's essentially the Lex Luthor of crime. If you took the Kingpin, and gave him Professor Moriarty's widespread plots and schemes, and turned Lex's scientific genius into crime smarts, you'd have The Big Man.

Mr. Biggs doesn't just see ahead. He sees several steps ahead. He has the chess game mapped out years in advance, and you don't even know you're playing until he's got his fingers around your head and is maneuvering you into a suicide run against two rooks and a queen.

(How's that for a comparison, son?)

So, say you're a supervillain back in the 20's and 30's. You've spent the last couple decades robbing banks of their big bills and taking advantage of a nation whose police are still highly inefficient, and whose top cops in the Bureau are a little sloppy around the edges. You've got the long underwear set and the local police after your fine little !@#%, but generally speaking you're doing okay.

But things are changing. You've got someone like John running the Bureau, now, and he's not taking !@#$ from anyone. He's got his G-men out across the country running down bank robbers and other assorted scum. New techniques in crime solving are being applied, and it's getting harder to beat the rap when they finally do nab you, provided they even take you in alive.

And you remember me saying that John doesn't like superheroes, either, right? He thinks they're almost as bad as the supervillains. Maybe it's because he wants his Bureau to be the good guys, and not a bunch of idiots in long underwear. Or maybe it's because he might know a thing or two about the sort of monsters in the mind that'd make you put your long johns on over your pants and take to the streets at 3 in the AM, pouncing on rapists, thieves, and someone who thinks God told him to knock over the Treasury, and gave him the power to do it with?

Or maybe he's just !@#$ jealous? Who can say?

But now there's a war, and a war's always a good chance to mix it up. One deal with the President, and suddenly white is black, up is down, and punk rock is !@#$ new wave.

Suddenly the bad guys are the good guys, even though the good guys are also the bad guys.

Suddenly John can't go after either of them, anymore, because the President is telling him they're needed for the effort for the war that's undoubtedly coming. And that's got to !@#$ with his sense of right and wrong, right there, which makes it harder for him to make good and sensible decisions when it comes to going after anyone.

In the meantime, you'll note that The Big Man's supercriminals are going after any other villains out there who won't play ball. This equates to The Big Man having just taken over the country's supercrime with official, but quiet, backing from the American government.

And a full Presidential pardon? Oh, that's just wonderful. It means that anyone who did horrible, nasty, !@#$ vile and awful things before the War gets to walk out of the end of it a free man or woman.

Which means you get to spend the war planning your next move without worrying about the man chasing after you. And oh what plans they made...

Okay, up we go. There's a good place nearby where we can get a beer. Then it's on to the White House. Really.

(SPYGOD is listening to Play for Today (The Cure) and pulling back a Captain Lawrence Golden Delicious)

11/3/11 - They Are Legion pt 2

So what did I tell you, son? Best dogs in DC or what? All we need now is a couple beers and we're in heaven, even if this is the furthest place from it, most days.

Well, yeah, they'd probably bust us for carrying open containers. Of course, I'd just bust 'em back for !@#$ with a man on official business. This isn't just sight-seeing today. Someone's gonna meet the reaper, face-first and in the dirt.

Who? Oh, we'll get to that. Don't you worry.

Speaking of getting to that, here we are. I said we were going to the White House, didn't I? Well, !@#$ that. This is a lot more important to the story.

Where are we? !@#$ you, son. You should know what this is. This is the place on the Mall that no one ever comes to, except to go from one thing to another.

The World War II Memorial. Inaugurated in 2004. One pillar for every state involved in the conflict, and one star on that wall for every person who died defending them.

40,000 stars, son. That's a lot of dogfaces, jarheads, and sailor boys.

No, I don't know who's bright !@#$ idea it was to make this hallowed ground look like just another !@#$ fountain, but they should be dug up, brought back to life, !@#$ slapped, and shot in the !@#$ face. Everyone's too busy looking at the Washington Monument over there and the Lincoln Memorial over there to pay attention to what's really going on.

Kind of like life in DC, actually.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite spots. You can tell who really gives a !@#$ about important things. They take their time and look around. They salute. They touch the stars on the wall.

They cry.

There was a lot worth crying about in those days, but we didn't start weeping until the Japanese brought the reality home for us. We wanted to stay out of Europe's problems, and didn't really care about what happened in the Pacific as long as it stayed far West of Hawaii. We had our hemisphere and were content with it, especially after what happened the last time we went overseas.

But we knew it was coming. We knew. You didn't have to be one of those crime-fighting psychic swami types to know that fascism and democracy were going to go head-to-head. If it wasn't over human rights it'd be over business, and if it wasn't over business it'd be over the simple fact that when the rock starts rolling down the hill, it's going to take others with it, and before long you're dodging a !@#$ avalanche.

This particular avalanche was called the Nazi Party. There was stuff going on in Spain and Italy, too, of course, not to mention the Pacific. But if you wanted to put a face on the darkness that was going to consume the world for all those years, you couldn't have picked a better face that a certain !@#$hole with a Charlie Chaplin mustache, a Hugo Boss uniform, and a really !@#$ book to sell.

No, not Herman Cain. Jesus !@#$, son. Pay attention.

A lot of the groups that Hitler sent off to the camps like to say they were the first ones who were rounded up when the Third Reich took power. But it's a well-known fact that the first group were superheroes. Hitler was !@#$ queer for them in a bad way, what with all that talk about supermen and what have you, so he figured the more he had on his side, the more it looked like what he was selling had some real weight to it.

Not everyone wanted to get a membership card and goosestep in time, though. In fact, there were a lot of them who told him to get !@#$. So those German heroes were given an ultimatum: use their power for the good of the Fatherland, or suffer the consequences.

Bottom line, when the Wehrmacht struck, it had superhumans at the front line. And you better !@#$ believe that scared the !@#$ out of the Russians, not to mention the Brits, and then us.

Roosevelt watched those films with a growing sense of dread. He knew that Hitler had plans to attack America, once Europe was under his heel, and that we'd be facing some of those superhumans in battle when that happened. He also knew that Japan had a mess of superheroes at work conquering the Pacific rim, and they were very well organized.

There was a superhero gap, basically. And while they could get patriotic heroes to sign up and help England on the quiet, he knew they'd need more for the time when the world lit up like a bonfire, and all the people who were saying "let's stay out of it" started calling for blood.

Which is funny, because at the same time he's thinking about that gap, and telling his people to find ways to close it, someone else is thinking about a way to exploit it. Someone with a lot of inside information, and the smarts to make it all work for him.

So one fine day in 1939, the President gets word through one of his Department people that someone would like to meet with him on a matter of national security. The someone doesn't have a name, of course, but this well-meaning man of mystery's handed over a letter that he says the President really needs to see.

And, sure enough, every !@#$ word on the page is something that the President and his people have either been thinking, or doing, or trying to keep quiet about that little problem in Europe. That and a few intriguing solutions to the gap, except that they that aren't fully explained. They're all tantalizing suggestions, half-answers, and !@#$ like that.

Of course there's more, but apparently this guy will only talk to the President, himself. And that's what really sets Roosevelt's hackles up. Who is this guy and how the !@#$ does he know all this !@#$? Is there a leak in the Oval Office or the War Department? What's going on, here?

No one's got a good answer, but what can they do? They're !@#$ if they don't fix the problem, and this guy seems to have all the answers. Pragmatism beats out paranoia, eventually. Besides, Roosevelt wants to know how this guy knows all this stuff.

Now, meeting with the President's a dicey thing, even in the best of situations. But Roosevelt's in a chair and doesn't want anyone to know about it. That's okay, though. It seems the guy not only knows about that, too, but has a solution.

The meeting happens by way of a big wooden crate. Someone wheels it into the Oval Office. Inside the box is another box. A big black box with a curved pane of glass in the front and a lot of glass tubes sticking out the back. And on top of the box is what looks like a movie camera, only it's wired into the box and doesn't seem to have a crank or a winder or anything.

Meeting time comes, someone throws the switch. The box hums and comes to life. And on the big pane of glass, looking at the Roosevelt, is the one and only Gilbert M Biggs.

Otherwise known as The Big Man.

"Hello, Mr. President," says the man on the screen: "You can hear and see me, and I can hear and see you. I thought this would be more convenient and less risky for the both of us. Shall we talk about a solution to our nation's problem?"

The President, astounded, nods and says "Yes. Let's talk."

Two firsts, right then and there. First Oval Office video-conference, back before most people even knew what a !@#$ television was. And first time the American Government knowingly got into bed with its own supercriminals.

It'd be about eight more years before we realized what we'd done and snuck out of the hotel room window, but by then the damage was done.

Okay, time to get moving. White House this time. No fooling. 

(SPYGOD is listening to Lament (The Cure) and still enjoying that questionable lemon-lime soda)

11/2/11 - They Are Legion pt 1

One of the few nice things about Washington D.C. is that, if all else fails, you can blame what happens here on the !@#$ weather. And generally speaking, it !@#$ sucks.

There's a reason they call it Foggy Bottom, after all. It's muggy, hot, and rainy for part of the year, and then cold and nasty the rest, with the occasional tropical storm and nasty flood. And then Mother Nature, being the grand !@#$ goddess that she is, sees fit to throw a few spots of sunshine on either side to remind you of what you'd be getting if you lived someplace sensible. Like California.

Personally, I think it's the perfect weather for our nation's Capitol. If we were someplace sunny and temperate you'd be fooled into thinking that this was a nice town, full of happy, smiling people ready and waiting to serve you with decency, humility, and basic human kindness. A town full of smiley-faced public servants who never tire, never falter, and never frown.

But you only need to be splashed in the face by a puddle of yesterday's festering rain water by some evil, !@#$-eyed cab driver, on your way from one Congressional !@#$-reaming to another, to get the point that you are not in happyland.

Happyland is for the tourists, son. The shining, happy people who think the Capitol is a museum, the Smithsonian has no political agenda, and the Spy Museum is !@#$ real.

Not people like you and me.

What brings me down here to harsh reality, today? It ain't the Brickskeller, that's for !@#$ sure. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that they still haven't repaired the damage left over from when I discovered my favorite watering hole had turned into a hippie alien love bar. I'm sure you'll also be happy to know that the muppet-haired girl who gave me all the !@#$ is a mind-bombed wreck, standing outside the construction fence and wondering when she gets to go back to work.

Sometimes I feel guilty for snap decisions I make when I'm so !@#$ ticked off I could destroy random people with my eyes. Sometimes not so much. Either way, I walked by and gave her another taste of SPYGOD VISION, just for laughs, but she didn't even whimper this time.

(I hope that doesn't means I'm losing my touch)

But, no -- no heavy drinking this trip. No godlike bowl of Pho, either. No junkets, no kickbacks, no back alley black limo deals sealed with strange drug orgies at some Senator's deniable party pad. This is straight up spy business, today.

Someone's messed up, son. And someone's gonna die.

Who's today's winner of the 50 Caliber Retirement Plan? Well, there hangs a tale along with a body. Walk with me a bit, here. Let's take us a two-legged tour of the city that good forgot.

* * *

I'm sure you'll remember that I've had the COMPANY running like a split chicken with its head cut off, not really sure if we're going after HONEYCOMB or the Legion? Most folks think it's HONEYCOMB, but their bosses know different, or at least think they do. And, based on what's been going out over the super-sneaky backdoor communications channel in The Flier, which would be the one they think I don't know about, it's clear that the word's out: the Legion's going down.

Are they? Well, that's another story for another day.

But let's talk about some history, here. We're in the right town for it, after all. You can't get drunk and !@#$ in an alley without splashing your homemade lemonade close to something that some historian wrote a whole !@#$ book about, once.

You want to know about Legion? We have to talk about money. And if you want to talk about money, well, there's only one place to go in this town. Right around the corner, here... aha!

See this here? This is the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. You want to know where your money comes from, and then goes back to at the end of its strange, hand-to-hand existence? This is it. Free tours, historical exhibits, messed-up money, and the weird sense that the eye in the pyramid is watching your slack !@#$ covet it from across the room.

Amongst the exhibits are a selection of old bills. The sort that you look at and immediately wonder how hard it would be to smash the glass and take. We're talking bills worth $500, $1000, $5000, $10,000. Even a $100,000 bill with our old friend Woodrow "League of Impotent Nations" Wilson on it. How's that for temptation?

Now, consider this. Those bills were made in the late 1920's. You didn't see them out on the street, of course, because they were really for banks and the government to handle big-!@#$ transactions. But can you imagine what a $1000 dollar bill could have bought you in 1929?

And can you even think about how much a hundred grand would have been worth in 1929? About a million and a quarter dollars, according to some online fruit machine I consulted for the sake of exposition.

Now imagine a bag full of those !@#$, going from bank to bank. Imagine the common criminal, looking at those armored cars going back and forth and wondering how to get his !@#$ hands on all that !@#$ money. Is it any wonder so many people picked up tommyguns and said "!@#$ the law"?

And now that we're on that subject, let's look over at your uncommon criminals. The other side of the coin to the uncommon people that were around to stop them. Supervillains and Superheroes, back before we called them Science Terrorists and Strategic Talents.

There were a !@#$ lot of them back then, before The War. Scores of them. You needed a !@#$ phonebook to keep track of everyone. Bunches of crazy guys and gals in costumes with weird science gadgets out breaking the law or upholding it.

And you know, getting those suits and weird science gadgets took money, which you may remember wasn't really in big supply at the time. Funny that they issue a bunch of super-large bills just before the economy falls the !@#$ down and breaks its skull, isn't it? It's almost like they knew the party was about to end.

Who, me, spread rumors? Perish the thought.

But yeah, that's how it was. Before the Great War, the heroes and tended to be independently wealthy, square-jawed types with some neat gimmick or something they learned while in India, sometimes both, but always understated. And the villains were homely and mean fellows who fell in behind some caricature of a crime lord who might or might not have a secret or two, but was usually just some venal little !@#$ who wanted to own his own town. 

Now, after the Great War, things changed. Everyone wanted to be flash and project some kind of power. Battle had taught the American male the value of scaring the living !@#$ out of someone before they could aim a gun in your direction, and having at least one or two tricks up your sleeve in case the fright didn't work. Villains all became misshaped freaks, overpowered lugs, or people who looked like they watched too many horror movies.

Especially "Phantom of the Opera." The original, son. Not that wussy piece of !@#$ stage show all the sensitive kids want to live out these days. That was the face that launched a thousand murky, backroom master villains with a solid sense of justification for their criminal acts.

And if you wanted to be running a criminal empire from the privacy of your secret lair, with more henchmen than you knew what to do with, you needed money. Lots of !@#$ money. Hence the rash of bank robberies and other high-finance shenanigans that my buddy John had so much fun dealing with, back then.

Now, you'd think between the normal mobsters knocking over some banks, and people like Firebug, Safecracker, and Bloody Mike knocking over others, The Bureau would be glad for the help when the heroes showed up?

You'd think so. But you'd be !@#$ wrong. Hoover !@#$ hated Superheroes. Always did, even after The War. As far as he was concerned, his Bureau were the real heroes, and anyone out there in a pair of long underwear trying to catch The Sneak at three in the !@#$ morning was just an amateur who was going to get himself or someone else killed.

Or, worse, in on the act and just there to distract the police. Which did happen a few times, I'm sorry to say. Things got pretty gray there, for a while, and Hoover, like most hard nosed cops, liked them black and white.

At least until The War made gray a lot more attractive to his boss, over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Come to think of it, let's start walking over there, son. We could both use the exercise, and it'll make the next part of our story come alive. 

(That and there's a dog stand on the way you just gotta try. Best in town. Trust me.)

(SPYGOD is listening to Faith (The Cure) and having some nasty, generic lemon-lime soda from said dog stand)