9/03/12 - 9/08/12 - The Learning Curve - pt. 5

"So, what do we learn today?" the President asks, looking at what's left of the rock they spent yesterday shooting and exploding into little, smoking pieces.

"That's a !@#$ good question, Mr. President," SPYGOD says, sitting down and having some more of the tea his pupil learned the truth about, last night: "How about I leave that up to you?"

"Me?" the President asks, turning to look at his instructor with some incredulity.

"Yes, you," SPYGOD replies: "You ever wanted to ask me a question about how to do something, now's the !@#$ing time."

"Any question?"

"Well, within !@#$ing reason. There's some things I'm not telling anyone, no matter what."

"I bet," the President says: "I'm sure your trade secrets have secrets."

"Lies wrapped in truth," SPYGOD says, looking off into the distance: "Best way to serve 'em up."

"That's what the head of the CIA used to tell me," he says, sighing: "I wonder if he was actually him when he said that. How long was he one of theirs?"

"Near as I can tell?" SPYGOD asks: "I'm guessing sometime after I !@#$ed up the Legion, back in early December. Probably not too long after that."

"Why would you say that?"

"Well, after that whole mess with Agent S, I went over to his office and had a few words with him. And I don't mind telling you that I scared the living !@#$ out of him."

"Oh, the bathroom incident?" the President asks: "Yeah, his executive secretary wrote me a complaint about the smell. I told him to dip into the funds and buy a gas mask."

SPYGOD chuckles: "And they say you have no sense of humor."

"At times. You were saying?"

"Oh, right. Well, at that moment he was very !@#$ing afraid of me. That I got into his private little sanctum and interrupted his afternoon poop, that was bad enough. But the fact that I knew he was involved in that fiasco, and didn't need to prove it to act on it? That was terrifying.

"And the fact that I'd given you all the dirt I'd had saved up for a rainy week? Well, that !@#$ing petrified him, Mr. President. And that's a !@#$ hard thing to fake."

"And the next time you saw him, he wasn't afraid, anymore?"

"Not at all. Now, to my shame, at the time, I thought he was just being brave and putting up a front. And I was so !@#$ing busy with what happened after that, and then HONEYCOMB, and Costa Rica, and then GORGON, that it really slipped my mind."

"Yeah, you were a little preoccupied, there. One disaster after another."

SPYGOD scowls, but takes the criticism in stride: "And over time, towards the end, there, a small piece of my brain was telling me that he hadn't been putting up a front. The !@#$er just wasn't afraid of me, anymore. But even then, I wasn't sure why. Did he have a better angle? Was someone else helping him? Did another plan to de-SPYGOD his Washington D.C. come along? And-"

"And you told yourself you'd look into it, and you never did."

"Because I didn't !@#$ing have the time."

"And you don't delegate responsibility very well."

"No," SPYGOD admits: "I don't. I have Agents all over the world doing a multitude of things, strategic talents at my beck and call, and all kinds of ways to put pressure and heat on people and things. But when it comes to things like that? I want to look into them myself. I need to be the one to look in on them."

The President nods: "Trust issues?"

"Maybe. Or maybe perfectionism."

"I think our definitions of perfect might not agree with one another."

"Possibly. You wanting another impromptu training session where I kick your !@#$ with moves you never even heard of?"

The President smiles: "You really don't to be criticized, either, do you?"

"Does anyone?"

"No, not really," the President says, sighing: "Neither do I. And I have to be honest, here, (REDACTED). I dropped the ball, too."

"Really?" That gets SPYGOD's attention.

"Yes. There were things I noticed as well. Little things, weird coincidences. Things people said or left unsaid in Cabinet meetings, intelligence reports that didn't make much sense, or made too much sense. And, yes, the CIA direction being afraid to have a meeting with me, and then being this smiling, over-agreeable, obsequious nonentity..."

The President looks askance, and then back: "I should have said something. I should have done something."

"So why didn't you?"

"You."

"Me?"

"You. All the while, I knew I should come talk to you about this. About the head of the CIA, the weird things, all those concerns. But at the time, I was angry with you, and trying to find a way to fire you. So I didn't want to feel like I was too dependent on you, and I sure didn't want to take you into my confidence just to say 'oh, by the way, have your resume updated.'"

"So you didn't say anything."

"I didn't say anything. And, well..." He gestures to the open sky: "Here we are."

"It's got nice sunsets," SPYGOD offers, sipping his tea.

"And excellent sunrises. And the cuisine is superior."

"And how about that Olympic pool?"

"Best bed I've ever slept in."

"And the entertainment is just !@#$ing non-stop."

They both laugh at that, for a while, and look at the sky.

* * *

"So what is the CIA Director, now?" the President asks, after a time: "Is he really dead?"

"That's what they said. But I suspect he's been recycled by now. Probably sucking !@#$ in their machine, somewhere. Little worm."

"But that isn't really him, is it? Was it ever really him?"

SPYGOD shakes his head: "No, Mr. President. That seems to be the truth of their new conversion process. When a False Face gets hold of you, they make a copy of your brain patterns, memories, and physical structure, and then use the energy of your body to fuel the change. You collapse into a big !@#$ing pile of nothing, and they walk away looking and talking and !@#$ing sounding just like you."

"That's not what they used to do, though?"

"Well, no. Used to be, they got you to carve your !@#$ing face off after they brainwashed your !@#$ six ways to Sunday, and then had you impersonate someone else. But these new false faces are something entirely different."

"And the Imago, themselves?"

"Now that's the ten million Dollar question right there," SPYGOD says, raising his tea mug in the President's direction: "What the !@#$ are they? Where the !@#$ did they come from? What's the endgame, here?"

The President raises both eyebrows: "You mean you don't know?"

"No, I don't," SPYGOD says: "That's what I'm hoping we can find out, you and I."

"And how are we going to do that?"

SPYGOD smiles: "That's the other ten million dollar question, Mr. President. And you're going to have to trust me on that, because I don't want you knowing too much of how we're going to play this one."

The President sighs, nods, and gets himself some tea.

"So is there anything else I need to know?" he asks after a while: "Something else you need to teach me, while I can still handle this tea?"

"A few things, but they can't be really be taught," SPYGOD says: "They have to be learned. And the only way you're going to learn them is to do them, or be them."

"Which means what?"

"Which means, Mr. President, that you can start packing things up, if you'd like."

The President blinks: "Really? We're done?"

"We are. Camp !@#$-You-Up is officially closed for the season."

"Well, how about that," the President says, getting up, cracking his back, and looking around at all the things they were shooting off yesterday: "And I suppose I'm the one who gets to pack everything up?"

"You handle the guns. I'll get everything else. Call it a graduation present."

The President smiles and bends over to start collecting things. Each gun he handles reminds him of a specific lesson, a specific stance, and for a few moments he's lost in thought, remembering those lessons almost perfectly...

That's when he realizes he's just walked into a trap.

"That was pretty dumb," SPYGOD says, and the President can hear the tell-tale sounds of a knife being pulled from a sheath. 

He turns to confront SPYGOD, but it's too late. He's already lifted up his eyepatch, and the waves of dizzying, nauseating SPYGOD VISION are buffeting the President's brain like a sudden whirlwind does a pile of leaves.

He staggers backwards, resisting the urge to scream, or flee. He gags back bile, and fights to retain control of his bowels and bladder. He scrambles, looking for any kind of weapon or advantage, but can't concentrate on what's what, anymore.

"What did I !@#$ing tell you about this sort of thing?" SPYGOD asks, his voice seeming to come closer, step by step: "First !@#$ing day we were here, Mr. President. Lesson number !@#$ing one. Never fail to expect danger. Lesson number !@#$ing two. Never turn your back on a potential opponent."

He closes his eyes. He tries to shut out the crazy, vertigo-inducing light show, and the auditory bombardment that threatens to send his mind over the edge of sanity, hurtling to the soul-wrecking cliffs far below.

"Consider this the final lesson, Mr. President," SPYGOD taunts, coming ever closer, no doubt with the knife at the ready: "What do you do when the enemy has you pinned down with something you didn't train for? Can you adapt? Or are you !@#$ed?"

The President scrambles away from the voice, trying to find something to fight back with. A rock. A stick. A !@#$ing pen.

Anything.

"Cause from where I'm standing..."

His hand brushes against something metal. Hard and cold.

"...you are so !@#$ed."

A handle. A trigger.

A gun.

"And I'm the one that's gonna hold you down..."

The President holds the gun up, trying to focus enough to shoot it with his eyes closed. But he can do this. He's done it before.

He knows how to do this.

"Oh, a gun? Well, you have to !@#$ing shoot straight, Mr. President. You think you can do that?"

The President takes a deep breath, creating an area of stillness in his mind. He blocks out the nausea, the fear, the million jabbering noises that are trying to crawl into his brain through his ears and eyes and threaten to rip his brains into bloody grey pudding.

"You really think you can find me, if I move?"

The voice shifts direction. He concentrates on it, following it with the barrel of his gun.

"And what if I-" SPYGOD says, and then falls silent. The President almost panics, but then regains control and listens for the telltale sounds of his instructor's breathing, the shuffle of his feet on the uneven sand and rock, the sound of the knife whistling through the air-

BANG

The shot goes wild. he knows he missed. But then he hears a hissing intake of air, and the sound of a foot pushing off from a rock to come closer still-

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The first shot misses again. The second does not. Neither does the third.

SPYGOD falls down, silent. The ground thumps beneath him. His knife clatters away from his spasming hand.

The President shakes the vertigo and nausea loose from his head. His eyes clear and his ears go back to normal. He can see, hear, feel again.

He looks over where SPYGOD is lying, with two bullet holes in his forehead. He's gurgling blood and twitching and looking too !@#$ good.

He is trying to talk, though. It sounds like "Well done," but it could be "!@#$ you" or "That hurts" for all the President knows.

The President gets to his knees, and then his feet. He is violently sick, but does not turn away from his fallen foe. He wipes his mouth, regains some measure of his dignity, and keeps the gun trained on SPYGOD as the man's shattered skull heals back up.

"I graduate," the President says, lowering his gun just a little: "We're partners in this, now. No more ambushes. No more tests. You tell me what to do and I'll do it. But I need to be able to !@#$ing trust you, now. Agreed?"

"Agreed," SPYGOD says, his word more blood than air.

"Then here's my present," he says, tossing the gun aside: "You get to !@#$ing pack up everything, and carry it back."

"... lot of stuff..."

"Next year you can buy me a Corvette, or something," the President says, and goes to get himself some water, carefully keeping an eye on his vanquished instructor. He feels elated, shaken, relieved, worried, expectant, washed clean.

And free. Finally, totally free.

(SPYGOD is listening to Clean (Depeche Mode) and having a Chinggis)

2/9/12 - Think Fast And Kill What You Cannot Change (VI)

* Okay, we're !@#$ live at five. That's in the AM, people.
* Drop your !@#$, grab your socks, praise the lord and pass the !@#$ ammunition.
* Shower, shave, !@#$, shower, drink, get a killer !@#$, shower again. Thank goodness for boyfriends with good stamina.
* Yes, I called him boyfriend. No, I don't love him. Yes, I need him. Yes, this is !@#$ confusing.
* !@#$ it. Deal with it later. Kill now, deal later. I'll !@#$ drink to that.
* I don't want to drink to my role in the fight, though. I feel about as right sitting this one out as I feel marching behind the token anti-gay float at the Republican plank parade.
* But Dragon's being really adamant on that point, which is to say "!@#$y as !@#$." Something about the General needing to be above the field, and not in it.
* There was a bunch of other Zen bull!@#$ that went with it, but it came down to "what happens if you die?" And for once I had no answer. So I'm going to be here, watching it from the Deck instead of fighting in the drink.
* Not that getting to the Deck's any easier for that. We try and open the door, and it won't Star Trek open. !@#$.
* I try the override and all the lights in the room blow out. Double !@#$.
* One pulled-to-the-side bunkroom door later, we're on the main hallway and seeing that things have gone to !@#$ overnight. Lights are flashing on and off like a Las Vegas hotel sign, sparks are cascading from overloaded circuit junctions, and the systems panels are all saying "!@#$ You Yankee Bluejeans."
* No, son. This is not good. I start shooting near techs and barking orders, but it's overkill by now.
* We run into Myron on the way to the deck. He and Toyboss and a gaggle of reformed, water-based, former supervillains from the Legion are on their way to their machines. I ask him if he's a mean mother!@#$, and he just looks at me for a second and says "!@#$ yeah."
* I can see his eyes behind those sunglasses he's wearing all the time, since Costa Rica, though, and I know the words are ringing hollow.
* This is not good, either. Really not !@#$ good.
* Come on world, come on gods. Come on, God. Give this butt!@#$er a break, here. Or at least something to smile about.
* No luck there. I get to the deck and half the systems are clearly not !@#$ working. The VR gun pods are spinning too fast or not at all. The Anti-G stations are mostly grounded. And the big screen is showing !@#$ Sesame Street reruns, and its not even a good !@#$ episode.
* First thing I get handed to me is a list of everything that !@#$ broke last night while I was sleeping off my poor attempt at Dutch courage and pre-battle deck-walking. The second thing is a stiff !@#$ drink, courtesy of Second. I'm gonna need it, looking at this list.
* The story is that about a third of The Flier's systems are compromised in some way, ranging from catastrophic to minor. The good news is that we can still fly this !@#$, and use its defensive measures. The bad news is that offensive shooting's going to be interesting, to say the least.
* Worse news is that if we can't get this !@#$ fixed we'll have to do it all manually, which means, Dragon be !@#$, I will have to go out there and kick some !@#$.
* Not that this would be a bad thing, of course, but I try not to crow too much. I'd like to sleep in my own bed, tonight.
* The more hopeful news is that Dr. Yesterday was working on it around the clock, mostly because I told him I was going to come down and kick his !@#$ around the South Pole if I didn't have tangible results by this morning.
* He said I should have a systems upgrade package on hand by this morning. I !@#$ better.
* While everything's !@#$ bedlam on the Deck, everything's fine on the flight deck. Everyone's ready to deploy. All we have to do is wait for the optimum moment, which should come as soon as Dr. !@#$ Yesterday sends me that !@#$ upgrade and we install it.
* Ah, right on cue. I got mail. !@#$ wonderful.
* He says we should just download it into the mainframe and sit tight while the ship reconfigures itself? Oh great. Remote !@#$ carrier repair at 12000 feet above a battleground? !@#$ me.
* I'd have rather done this last !@#$ night, really. Or a !@#$ week ago. But we're out of time and out of options. Do it.
* Okay... that was interesting.
* The lights went down, the walls shimmered, and there was a definite wave as the ship fixed itself from stern to bow. But then the lights came back up again, and while there were no noises, extra bangs, or whistles.
* The engineers are telling me the system failures are gone. We're running at 101%, right now, and it's about !@#$ time.
* Was that a cheer I heard from the flight deck? !@#$ me, I hope so.
* Someone hands me a big, purple spliff and a big !@#$ bottle of Jack Daniels. Three puffs off one and a half-a-bottle swig off the other, and we're ready to get this party started.
* OPERATION DECAPITATION is in mother!@#$ effect, kids. Look alive!
* Release cloak cloud. Take her down to sea level.
* Activate reflex weapons and long range weapons. Have torpedoes and depth charges on standby. Have shields ready to deploy on my mark.
* Ready the drop subs, dolphin pods, and specialized machines. Tell the drones they are go, go, go.
* The N-drones streak off to their target, about fifty miles away. I suspect they must be quite a !@#$ sight, all streaking in like that.
* Heh heh. If I was GORGON I'd be !@#$ my pants, right about now.
* The Dragon ruins my moment of joy by whispering zen strategy bull!@#$ in my ear. It has the effect of making me incredibly irritated while reaffirming what I really already !@#$ knew, just like most Asian philosophy.
* I can't really threaten to shoot him, so I thank him for his input and tell him to get down to the flight deck and make sure confidence is !@#$ high. He looks a little miffed, but he'll live. So will I.
* The moment he's gone, I tell Second to make sure Lady Gilda is fueled and ready to go. If I have to get out there and fight, I !@#$ well will.
* N-drones coming up on the target. They are submerged.
* Underwater sonar-assisted cameras are working perfectly. I can see them heading for the opening those GORGON subs went into, all those months ago. If all goes well they will be deploying their robot missiles in 3, 2, 1...
* And they're away. One in each cluster is a camera, programmed to hang back and show up the carnage. They fly into the fissure and down the tunnels Myron told us to expect, looking for possible targets.
* Holy !@#$ those tunnels are big. The one they're in now looks like it could swallow the !@#$ Flier and have room left over for a couple long-range subs.
* !@#$ me. The bricks they're made of are the size of small houses. Who made these things? When? How?
* There's large writing on them, but nothing I know. Though there's something about it... something familiar...
* No sign of any automated defenses. No GORGON subs. No soldiers lying in wait. Just the blackness and the cold, slowly lit up as we go further into it.
* Those Deros things could be around any corner, too. I don't know if they're sleeping or dead or if GORGON made some kind of weird deal with them. Wouldn't put it past them to try.
* This is !@#$ unnerving. I need more whiskey. 
* Junction up ahead. Missiles are veering to the right, as that's where we think the juncture is. Hope it isn't a maze or they're going to run out of !@#$ go before they get to blow anything up-
* Aha! There they were. Subs straight ahead, waiting for us. Robots, die well.
* Phase two, release the specialist machines. That would be Myron and whatever weird underwater drill thing the !@#$ Toyboss came up with.
* They get the hard part in this. They drop straight down to the floor and drill their way just behind the junction while we fight from the !@#$ front, catching them in a twofer.
* Robot missiles are extinguished. Got the subs before they could even fire back. Excellent.
* Tell the N-drones to fire the second wave. Same trajectory as the first. Let's pick off !@#$ stragglers and survivors and see if they have more lying in wait.
* Word from Myron is that they're barreling down to the floor. They have to take it somewhat easy or they'll crack and flatten. That's if they don't get shot to !@#$, first.
* Even more unnerving, waiting for this one. If Myron !@#$ this up, there is no plan.
* Second wave of missiles is heading back into the sub pen. Nothing.
* Nothing? That can't !@#$ be right. Has to be some stragglers, somewhere?
* Keep going. Maybe those were meant to slow us down.
* Myron's reporting in. They're down and drilling. Toyboss is backing him up. Everyone's ready to go.
* Alright, I'm pressing forward. Tell them to drop the dolphin pods. Send them the !@#$ in after the drills and let them !@#$ anything they can't eat.
* Yes, Myron, that means a bunch of uplifted Japanese hentai rapist dolphins are coming up your tailpipe. Better hurry it the !@#$ up, hadn't you?
* Heh, proper motivation. Gotta love it.
* Okay, missiles are encountering fire. We have bogeys on screen. Looks like automated defenses. Also looks like they're sending subs into the fight.
* Hear that, Myron? You got your distraction! Go, go, go!
* Alright, he's through. Just in time from the looks of it. Dolphins are in and...
* What the !@#$ is that? There in the central juncture. It looks like... pulsating lights, circular motion. Some kind of a generator the size of the Flier? 
* Oh, well it's obviously !@#$ important. They're shooting at the dolphins! Boys, send in the subs! We're going to need to go in firing.
* Well, okay, if the dolphins can mess with their man-subs that easily, maybe we won't need our own. Not that I need to really see GORGON agents get !@#$ in the !@#$ and explosively decompress through their armor-
* Oh man. What the !@#$ hit our missiles? Was that an energy barrier?
* Okay, plan D. Tell the N-Drones to go in, themselves. Let's see if we can loop around a different juncture-
* Oh my God. What just ate that dolphin?
* Great, they have giant prehistoric dolphin-eating cave fish. Of course they would. Yeah, send in the subs.
* Can someone get a good image of that central thing? It looks like a bunch of gears rotating around each other in freefall, to me. Glowing, too. Hard to make anything out.
* !@#$ it, this is why I should be in there. I can't see !@#$ from that screen. I need to be there, looking at it.
* (Oh, Dragon's back on Deck. Better button up that talk.)
* Okay, Myron's reporting in. The supervillains are go. They're going to find an access hatch and start storming the dry parts while we take down the water. There's got to be some sort of control center there, somewhere.
* Wait, that machine. I know what it is. It's...
* ...
* Oh !@#$. Oh !@#$ !@#$ on a !@#$ !@#$ with a !@#$.
* Get out of there! All personnel, abort! Abort!
* Get us the !@#$ airborne, now! Subs, head for cover! Repeat, subs head for cover!
* Can't we go any faster? Oh man, someone get me manual fire control! Make sure the shields are-

(COMMUNICATION LOST)

(SPYGOD is listening to Deep Six (Matthew Good Band) and drinking defeat by the gallon)

1/16-18/12 - Et in Arcadia, Arcadia Ego

1/16/12
FOX NEWS REPUBLICAN DEBATE
MYRTLE BEACH CONVENTION CENTER

Moderator: This question is going to Governor Perry. Sir, I'm sure you, like your fellow candidates, have been noticing that the role of America's Strategic Talents in the world has changed quite a bit in the last year. The COMPANY, which oversees America's Supers, has declared outright war against a number of America's enemies. The remnants of the Fourth Reich, ABWEHR, are gone, as are the Legion, and, as of just before Christmas, HONEYCOMB. 

While many are applauding the effort, there's been some question as to the decision making process behind this offensive. Word from the White House is that SPYGOD, the head of The COMPANY, did not seek permission from the President, nor confer with him as to the ramifications of the matter before going off on this crusade. Indeed, we're told the President was embarrassed on live television for trying to take credit for the raid on Antarctica, only to be told off by SPYGOD, himself.

(Audience laughter)


Moderator: Now, sir-

Perry: Is there a question in all that?


(Audience laughter)

Moderator: Yes, sir. You've spoken before on the need for a strong military, and the need to react quickly and unilaterally against threats. Do you approve of what The COMPANY is doing? And do you think SPYGOD is handling the matter as well as he ought to be, given that the man who he reports to directly is apparently completely out of the decision making loop?

Perry: Well, I can't help but think there's a few gotchas in that question, to be honest. But let's be honest, here. I think it's about time that we went after these people. We went after the people who were responsible for The Computer Hell Virus, and we've been going after terrorists in the Middle East since before then. Especially the ones who tried to hijack planes and crash them into Neo York City and Washington D.C. 


My concern, here, is why didn't we do this sooner? I mean...

(Audience applause) 

Let's face it, the guy who's running this agency, SPYGOD. He could have done this at any time in the last twenty or thirty years. Instead, they've been playing the game where they attack us, we stop them, we go after them, they retreat, and then a month or two later, maybe a year later, they pop up again and attack us, and we're doing it all over again. Why didn't we hammer them earlier, like this? Why did we wait?

So I think we need to ask that question. I think the answer will have something to do with this President trying to shore up what's otherwise going to be a really sorry legacy.

(Audience applause)


Perry: I think the notion that he didn't know what his Super Spy in Chief was doing is ludicrous and a dodge. I think he approved it all and then hung SPYGOD out to dry, so he could take some of the credit when it was all over and he could be rid of SPYGOD, because, let's face it, the man is an embarrassment to this country. 


(Audience applause, some booing)


Perry: Now, I've had some run-ins with SPYGOD, and I've never walked away from them feeling like he's in any way, shape, or form able to handle our nation's security. Word is that he's drunk more often than he's sober, taking all kinds of non-prescription medicines and maybe some illegal drugs, having improper relations with members of his own staff. And, let's not mince words here, he's a sexual deviant, and I think that sends the wrong message to our allies and enemies.

If the President cared about the security of this country, he'd have done the right thing and sent him packing as soon as he got the lay of the Oval Office down. 


Moderator: Congressman Paul? Should he have been sent packing? I know you've been critical of SPYGOD in the past.


Paul: Well... not exactly. You see, most of my criticism of him comes from what the previous administration had him doing on America's behalf around the world. I think there was a lot of serious mistakes going on in terms of foreign policy and how we treated our fellow nations back then, and SPYGOD was being used just like any other agency the President has direct control over. And now that things have changed in the Oval Office, well, sort of changed, you know how I feel about that by now.


(Audience laughter)
\
Paul: I think he's doing the right thing. We have to remember that, every day, this country is under siege by numerous dangerous organizations. There is essentially an undeclared war against our way of life. People like SPYGOD are our soldiers on the front lines. So let's not get too excited about his personal life. Let's look at the good he's done, and continues to do.

Moderator: Sir, I'm kind of confused. In 2008 you said, quote, "SPYGOD is the devil incarnate. He takes all the hard work our diplomats and soldiers do and essentially flushes it down the commode. He overrides the President with the barrel of a gun and just does what he wants. And as if that wasn't enough, he's the most immoral and obnoxious person I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. He's also an avowed homosexual, and that makes him the ultimate security risk. The man has to go, The COMPANY needs to be reformed, and if you send me to the other side of the National Mall that's exactly what I will do."

(Audience applause, laughter)

Paul: Oh, well, I didn't exactly say that. 

(Audience boos)

Paul: That... that was in one of my newsletters. Someone who used to work for me took that out of context and wrote it up. You know how these things are. But I will say this, The COMPANY could stand some reform, just like every Agency and Department in Washington, and I am the only person up here who would seek to follow the Constitution while doing so. 

Moderator: Governor Romney? Is he the only one who could bring that reform to the table, when it comes to The COMPANY and America's war on Super Terror?

Romney: No, I don't think he is. I think that egregious flip-flop we just witnessed is shameful. I was there when those words were spoken by the Congressman. He didn't have a wayward intern write them down in one of those questionable newsletters of his, that he still won't take credit for all of, even though his own name's on the top. We have to take responsibility for our own words, Mr. Congressman. We can't dodge them.

(Audience applause)

Romney: And with responsibility comes a lot of responsibilities. Or great power, or something. 

(Audience laughter)

Romney: I don't know, maybe something, there. I think we could ask the President. He reads that kind of stuff instead of how the country's really doing these days.

(Audience applause, laughter)

Romney: But to continue the answer, yes. SPYGOD needs to go. The man is an embarrassment to this nation. The COMPANY needs to continue on, because it does a lot of good work, and keeps us safe, but the man at the top of the Agency is a morally corrupt, out of control individual who's one drunk night away from causing another world war. 

I mean, did you hear that we almost got in a shooting match with South Korea late last year because of something he did, over there? And, as usual, the President had no idea he was even there until he was reading in the papers about how the South Korean authorities had to try and arrest him for doing something I'm not even going to talk about here. It was that distasteful. 

Moderator: I take it you're referring to his relieving himself on the grave of a South Korean President?

Paul: Well, didn't General Park urinate on his people's basic, God given liberty and freedom for years?

(Audience applause)

Paul: I mean, he stood up against Communism, but the man was a dictator. This is what I've been trying to say. We need to have a better foreign policy that's based on the golden rule-

Moderator: Congressman Paul, I think the Governor has the floor.

Romney: That's right, I do.

(Audience laughter)

Romney: But I think that's all I had to say on the matter, really. The man is clearly out of control, just like a lot of Washington since the President took office. I think our nation's safety and security is too important to put in the hands of someone who carries on like it's a wild Hollywood party.

(Audience applause)

Moderator: Out of control, wild Hollywood party, Governor Santorum?

Santorum: Absolutely. I think it's disgusting that we've let this immoral farce go on for as long as it has. I actually had the displeasure of meeting SPYGOD one time, when he was doing something top secret in Pennsylvania, when I was Governor. I had some complaints about how he was doing his business, and... well, I won't even tell you what he told me. It was just that hideous.

Moderator: Wasn't it something to do with Governor Dwyer, I think, sir? The Pennsylvania governor who shot himself on live television?

Santorum: You know, I really don't want to talk about it. That was a terrible episode in our state's history. I'd really rather we got past that. And I think we should get past SPYGOD, too. The sooner the better.

Moderator: Speaker Gingrich, you look like you've been gearing up to give a answer to this question.

(Audience laughter)

Gingrich: Was it that obvious?

(Audience laughter)

Gingrich: I'm going to differ a little from my colleagues, here. I think the basic fact is that, in an Administration that's been hamstrung by incompetence and waywardness, and utterly bereft of any guiding principles, other than getting re-elected, the only things that are really getting done are by SPYGOD. The man has done more to shore up our nation's security in the last year than the President has in the last four, and I suspect his sudden burst of activity has more to do with his being as disgusted as most Americans are at our current state of defense.

(Audience applause)

Gingrich: Now, having said that, yes, on an interpersonal level, the man is a little weird.

(Audience laughter, puzzlement)

Gingrich: However, we have to remember that he made a massive sacrifice many decades ago in order to safeguard not only America, but the entire world. He has a number of strikes against him and genuine handicaps as a result of that sacrifice. And while that's not always an excuse for some of his cruder displays, for which he can and should be taken to task, I think the positives far outweigh the negatives. We have to-
 
Santorum: He threatened the sanctity of my anus with what appeared to be a rocket launcher, Mr. Speaker.




Perry: He offered to indoctrinate me into the joys of homosexuality. I had to have my bodyguards chase him out of the Statehouse.

Romney: He also threatened me with something about the UFO that Joseph Smith came to Earth in... whatever that meant.

Gingrich: Well, I'm not going to comment on what he may or may not have said, or occasionally done while he was off duty. Let's look at what he did for his country, then and now, and consider that, if anyone had to be the one to do what he did for the sake the world, we should be grateful it was him, and not someone from the Soviet Union or China.
 
Romney: You know, you can only play that 'He killed Hitler' card a number of times. Mr. Speaker, you're a historian. Let's not forget that, before he betrayed our country, Benedict Arnold was a hero, too.

(Audience applause)

Gingrich: Now, now-

Moderator: Mr. Speaker? My apologies, bit we have to take a break, now. We'll come back and talk about foreign policy.


1/17/12
4:58 PM
THE ICE PALACE



For a moment, Mr. USA doesn't know what to do.

The horrible voice on the other end of the phone call has just told him what his new orders are. He blinks, fighting back tears, and exhales, and inhales sharply.

"No," he says. The first time he's ever spoken during one of these calls: "No."

"Did I hear you correctly, (REDACTED)?" The voice asks, mockingly: "Did you actually say no? To me?"

"You... you can't ask that of me, sir," the hero says: "It goes against everything. Everything I stand for. Everything we stand for. America. I can't-"

"You can and you will," the voice insists: "You will do exactly as you have been instructed. You will follow those commands to the letter. You will not falter. You will not renege on our agreement. And you show the slightest deviation from the plan, she will suffer."

She. Oh God. She. 

He tries to regain his composure. He coughs and tries not to sound as !@#$ screwed up and around as he actually is, right now. But it's useless.


"I'm sorry. It's just... sir, do you know what you're asking?"

"You must be joking, (REDACTED)," the voice replies after a very unnerving moment of silence: "I've known what I was doing since this started. I've known what I was doing since before you even came into the equation. The question is, do you know what I'm telling?"

Another hitched breath. A shudder.

"Let me put it to you this way, hero," the voice continues: "I'm looking at her right now."

"Oh no. Please, no..."

"I am looking at her through a very large scope."

"Oh God. No. Please, sir. No."

"You know what kind of scope it is. It's the kind we use when we need to end someone from a long way away, and not miss."

"Please-"

"She's in the backyard, completely unaware that she's being watched. And all I have to do is squeeze, just a little bit. Just squeeze. And then she won't be aware of anything. Not. Ever. Again."

Mr. USA drops to his knees, trying not to sob any more. Knowing what comes next makes all the difference in the world.

"Now, just so we're clear. This has been a major breach of protocol on your part. You're not supposed to be talking to me unless I ask you questions. You're not supposed to be begging me for mercy. You know the parameters of our arrangement. You listen, you obey, she lives."

He says nothing. He wants to scream. He can't say a word.

"Now go and do what I've ordered. I'm hanging up now. But just so you know? From now on, there will be three men watching her through scopes. Good luck trying to stop them all."

The phone call ends. Mr. USA screams. No one hears him.

Not even SPYGOD.

1/18/12
11:00 AM
NORTH CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

The Press surrounds the podium, waiting for the Governor to arrive. The word is that he's going to say something important. Better word is that, after dismal poll showings and a distinct lack of funds,  he's going to throw in the towel. The questions, then, are how he'll throw it, and who, if anyone, he'll endorse on the way out.

Hundreds of miles away, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, floats what's left of The Flier. A skeleton crew of Agents keeps it as ship-shape as possible, waiting for repairs that have been hamstrung by bureaucracy and small-mindedness. They've also been keeping scavengers away, knowing that even the weakest weapons system on board could start or end a war, somewhere, or at least fetch a good price for someone wanting to sell it. 


That and fishing. Lots of fishing. The cookouts have become legendary, now.


The Governor walks out, waving this way and that. Thank yous are said. Small talk is made. He grips the podium, basking in the love, or at least the camera flashes, and as he smiles and prepares to speak it's obvious that he knows this is it, at least for a while. The race is over, and this moment will never come again. 

“As I’ve stated numerous times during the campaign, this campaign has never been about the candidate. I ran for president because I love America. I love our people. I love our freedom and, matter of fact, this mission is greater than any one man."

The Agents feel the platforms before they see them. The radios squawk into life and instructions pour out of them. The day they've been waiting for is here, at long last. 


The reconstruction is finally here.

"As I’ve traveled across this great country, starting here in Charleston, going to New Hampshire, Iowa, California, down into Florida, numerous states in between obviously. I just covered this tremendous purpose, resiliency of our people. They’ve never lost hope despite the circumstances we find ourselves in. They haven’t stopped believing in the promise of America. They haven’t stopped believing in the American dream. Americans are down but we can never be counted out. We’re too great a people for that."

In moments, everyone has the rafts ready to go and is flinging everything they need into them. Not that they need a lot, of course, but while they've been preparing for this moment for quite some time, no one's really sure how long it might take. 

And the last thing they want is to be caught without crucial supplies while waiting for The Flier to rise again.

"What’s broken in America is not our people, it’s our politics. And what we need in Washington is a place that is humbler with a federal government that is smaller so that our people can live freer.
I entered this campaign offering a unique perspective. A governor who had led a large state leading a nation in job creation. An executive leader who had implemented conservative principles. A son of tenant farmers who was born with little more than a good name but who has experienced the great opportunity and freedom of this country."

The platforms are overhead moments after all the rafts are away, and all Agents a safe distance from the Flier. They watch as large boxes are tossed out the sides and back of each platform, falling down to a certain height and then exploding as their cargo violently exits. What looks like clouds of smoke but are actually swarms of tiny, single-use construction robots float on the breeze for a moment, and then rocket down to the stricken shell of what used to be The COMPANY's first, last, and best defense.

"But I’ve never believed the cause of conservatism is embodied by one individual. Our party and the conservative philosophy transcends any one individual. It’s a movement of ideas that are greater than any one of us and will live long past any of us in our lives.

"As a former air force pilot, I don’t get confused. I know we can’t lose track of the ultimate objective of carrying out our mission and that objective is not only to defeat President Obama but to replace him with a conservative leader who will bring about real change."

The clouds touch down, covering the wreck, and the resulting conversion from broken junk to base elements is swift and merciless. The mighty but old superstructure is dismantled in moments, and turned into a churning sea of metal, rubber, and plastic. 

As the Agents watch from above and below, the sea expands like a wave, but then falters and, like the swiftly receding tide that warns of a tsunami, rushes back to the center. And in that center, the boiling, roiling mass begins to take shape, again. 

"Our country is hurting. Make no mistake about that. Thirteen million people out of work. Fifty million of our citizens on food stamps. Fifteen trillion dollar national debt and growing. A Supers program that's run by an insane, militant homosexual. We need bold, conservative leadership that will take on the entrenched interests and give the American People their country back."

Length first, then height, then depth. Steel tendrils shoot forward, wrapping around each other and becoming framework, then passageways, then rooms. The skeleton is wrapped in armored skin, and weapons systems begin to reform over that.

Mighty engines are rebuilt from the inside out and placed where they need to go. Flight platforms self-rivet into place. Engine rooms assemble, and are brought partially online to fuel the ship as it recreates itself. Control decks clamber over one another like block towers falling in reverse.

A distant, atonal hum becomes the mighty thrum of its metal hearts beating, shuddering the leviathan into motion. Foot by foot, the machine rises from the ocean, its lights forming like fruit rotting in reverse and then glowing as bright as newborn suns.

"I have always believed the mission is greater than the man. As I have contemplated the future of this campaign, I have come to the conclusion that there is no viable path forward for me in this 2012 campaign.

"Therefore, today I am suspending my campaign and endorsing Newt Gingrich for president of the United States."

The Agents cheer, and then begin to paddle closer to the newborn machine. They don't need to know exactly what's going on in there, except that, once inside, they expect that it'll be everything they ever wanted in The Flier, but didn't think they'd get. 

They have faith. Sometimes that's more than enough. Sometimes that brings forth miracles.

There is a gasp and then a room full of applause. The tattoo of cameras and the surging of microphones increases. The Governor smiles, knowing that this moment will never come again, either, but if he's played his card right, this could be the start of something new and different.

"I believe Newt is a conservative visionary who can transform our country. We’ve had our differences, which campaigns will inevitably have. And Newt is not perfect, but who among us is?

"The fact is, there is forgiveness for those who seek God and I believe in the power of redemption, for it is a central tenet of my Christian faith."

"This is Agent Knowles," says the first Agent to get to the Bridge: "We have The Flier secured, sir."


"How does it look down there, son?" SPYGOD's voice says over the intercom, clear as FM radio.


"It's... it's beautiful, sir," the Agent says, looking around a bridge that's even more spacious and beautiful than the last one: "I think I've seen the face of God made manifest in our mighty fortress."

"Son, when I get down there, you and I are having a very large drink," SPYGOD says: "And then I'm going to teach you what the !@#$ not to say over an open channel."

The Governor opens his mouth again, to speak, but then hears some strange noises. At first he thinks it's someone slamming a door one time too many, but then he has a terrible pain in his head that flares up like a sudden migraine, and gets so bad so quickly that he feels the need to just sit down.

Lie down, really, and people scream as he does. That's the first thing that really tells him that something's wrong. That and the weird, warm wet running down his neck, his shoulders, the back of his shirt.

Something's wrong, but he's still not sure what. 

The worst thing is that he can't think. As people surround him, he can't remember who they are, or what they are to him. As the lights dim to the slowing beat of his heart he can't imagine why they seem so concerned.

Truly, this is paradise, he thinks he hears someone saying. He imagines a large space full of bright lights and happy, jubilant people, all drinking champagne from fluted glasses. Someone in a black leather uniform with an eyepatch is all but forcing one on him, berating him teasingly for not drinking enough.

You gotta sin to get saved around here, son, the man says, grinning ear to ear: Now drink up before some chicken!@#$ bureaucrat realizes how much we just spent on nanotech and wants to crawl up our !@#$ with a ruler to get every last penny accounted for. We got us a date in Costa !@#$ Rica.

Bewildered, the Governor closes his eyes once, then twice. The next time they open it's for good, until some kind soul, apparently unafraid of the ruin his head's become, runs a gentle hand over them to see they're closed.

And then there's nothing. Nothing at all.

(SPYGOD is listening to Democracy (Killing Joke) and having some $1000 a bottle Champagne)

12/2/11 Legion: Epilogue - pt 2

Meanwhile:

It's early in the morning in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Most people are asleep, or else straggling home from the inevitable after-party.

But some people work all night, most notably on the endless line of towers that the recent economic embarrassment has done little to slow the progress of. Brought from around the world to toil night and day, they toil under networks of bright lights: scores of artificial suns, up and down the highway.

Moloch sits near one, watching the metal come together under rough but skilled hands. He extends his mind out ever so slightly, and on the edges of that awareness he can just barely feel every rivet going into place, every arc welding, every post sunk into concrete.

He thinks of the new machine, back at his home. How new and shiny it is. How lovely.

How lethal.

His employer has stopped trying to contact him, at long last. Perhaps he's finally satisfied with his progress, or perhaps he's now his ex-employer and doesn't deign to give him his notice.

(He doesn't seem to have much in the way of communication skills, as Moloch has noticed)

But Moloch does not really care, anymore. This was never about money, except to build a new and better machine. Whatever his employer's goals were, or where they came from, Moloch's part in this has always been about destroying a man who claimed to be a god.

Just that.

He smiled, and then locks himself in his car. Then he extends himself out fully, jumping from metal to metal in an unbroken line, all the way up to the skeleton of the tower. There, in possession of the evolving creature, aware of every thing in and around it, he flexes his muscles ever so much.

The news will say it was an unexpected collapse. The dead workers will be blamed, and their families will not get any of the death benefits. The contractor might have his knuckles rapped under the table, but life -- and, more importantly, work -- will go on.

Moloch doesn't care. There will always be other towers. There has to be.

He needs his exercise, too.

* * *

Not quite half the world away, METALMAID pauses while crafting another furious letter to her followers, such as they are. Her logic circuits are overheating from all the anger she's projecting, and she needs to calm down for a time. 

Needs to cool that robot brain down.

 

Saying that things have not been going rather well is putting it rather mildly. She should have been free, by now. SPYGOD should be dead, and she should be leading her fellow, former Slaughterbots in a cold, clinical, and downright brutal punitive war against America. 

 

The human germs should have been conquered by now. The pitiful few survivors should have been put to work making more Slaughterbots, or at least making the factories that will make more Slaughterbots. 

 

(Unless, of course, they still want some of those human germs walking around and breeding, just so they can remember what they were fighting against. There's still some discussion about this amongst the few, former Slaughterbots that METALMAID can get to answer her.)

But all these plans are academic until SPYGOD is dead, and so far, she is having no luck making that happen. 

 

The first direct attempt failed, due to some limits of her programs. The plan required her to be sneaky, but she was never good at that, really. So she overcompensated some details, and underplayed others, unwittingly hamstringing her own attempt to present him with an no-win situation.

 

Then she contracted out to an expert, who, in turn, created a one-shot, fire and forget supervillain. That was also a failure, due to the fact that the would-be villain was a psychologically unstable idiot.

 

The expert was willing to try again, but she'd had enough of his failure. This time she decided to do a little uplifting of her own, and contacted an up-and-coming villain, offering him some upgrades and new technology provided he use it to deal with her problem.

This, too, was a failure, but it was one she could live with. Her assassin had not been an idiot -- merely outclassed by a smarter, or at least luckier, opponent. She offered more money for another chance, hoping that the second round would go better if her chosen warrior was more prepared. 

In the meantime, someone tried to kill SPYGOD under her nose. She still has no idea who put the bomb in his beloved flying car, but took some comfort in the fact that that attempt on his life didn't succeed, either. 

(And a little jealousy, as well. Why didn't she think of that?)

 

A second round between SPYGOD and her assassin went a little better, but still failed to bring victory. But then her would-be employer had to get stupid -- or so she thought -- and challenge him to a fight he could spend more time preparing for. 

And prepare he did.

For a week, SPYGOD was dead, at least to the outside world. But METALMAID knew better. She'd seen the massive preparations the COMPANY had taken to carry out that one illusion, and prepare for many more.

 

And suddenly, every plan she'd had going had to be altered or derailed. Every would-be assassin she could have contacted over the Undernet was already being called up to try and kill SPYGOD, to try and flush her out. And none of those assassins had a hope in computer hell at succeeding, because they were only killing clones, and COMPANY Agents were either handling them, or close at hand.

Suddenly, all she had to rely on was Moloch, and Moloch was taking too long to make another run at SPYGOD. Always one excuse or another. Always other considerations. And always a complete lack of concern at METALMAID's reasonable requests for progress reports and timetables.

Meanwhile, the situation was deteriorating. SPYGOD wasn't suspecting her hand in things, but it was all she could do to keep herself from having her programming checked for anomalies. Sooner or later he'd get that Dr. Yesterday egghead up here from the South Pole, and then it could be all over.

(Maybe sooner than that. She couldn't be sure, but she was wondering if BeeBee was beginning to suspect something. The cat won't let her pet her, anymore, and tends to run away when she treads through a room. No hisses, yet, but she thinks they're coming.)

Which means that, unless she gets the robot revolution up and running, at long last, the plan may fail. SPYGOD may nip it in the bud before it even gets off the ground, and if she isn't there to command it, it will either not start, or collapse around itself in an orgy of go-nowhere strategy discussions and tabled motions.

Something has to break, soon. Something must.

* * *

At that time, down in the Ice Palace, America's greatest superhero gets a call.

That isn't all that unusual, of course. Since he got the job of looking after this this freezing, former Supernazi redoubt, he takes about a thousand calls a day. Mostly from the United Nations, wondering how this, that, or the other thing is going.

(Do you have enough food? Are the penguins okay? Have you gotten through the door, yet? No? Well why not? Etc.)

But it's a call on that phone. The one no one knows about but him, and one other, certain person.

A name he's been trying to forget about, lately, but really can't. Not anymore.

So he goes down to the lowest tunnel, where no one is supposed to be going at all. It's where one of the last werewolves blew himself to kingdom come rather than surrender to the COMPANY, back in May. It's horribly radioactive and toxic as heck, but it's not like he has to worry about that, now does he?

He takes his time, to avoid suspicion. The phone rings and rings, but there's no hurry. The person on the other end won't hang up, not until they've spoken, anyway.

Finally, he's there. Satisfied that he's alone, he taps the subcutaneous button behind his ear three times, and just listens.

He doesn't get to talk during these conversations. He just listens. This is both for security purposes, and because the other person does all the talking in this particular relationship.

He just listens to the person's voice as it speaks. He does not reply, because small talk would be pointless. He does not question, because all aspects of his instructions are said, including what to do (or, rather, what will happen) if he fails.

It takes about five minutes, and then the person on the other end hangs up without really saying goodbye. Mr. USA lets go of the breath he's been holding all that time.

He has his true orders, yet again.

Of course, he doesn't really need to come down here for this. The conversation is one-sided, after all, and so quiet that no one but he can hear it. He could be in a crowded, noisy room and he'd hear it perfectly, and almost anyone they'd throw at him (except SPYGOD, of course) would be unable to hear it. He has no fear of the game being given away, and no worries of some well-meaning bluehelmet finding out too much.

No, he comes down here for these calls so no one can see him weep.

* * *

In a hallway behind another hallway, deep within the CIA's headquarters, the Director is doing something he swore he'd never do.

It's true what they say about Washington: when you get any kind of really big job in this town, you get to your office and there's a big envelope on the table. In that envelope are all the answers to all the questions you might have had about your new position, and all the things you didn't know it entailed.

The Director's envelope was a sinister and upsetting read.

It was mostly active cover-ups for things that happened so long ago that no one remembers them, along with some more recent, very upsetting things. The relationship with The Legion was one of them, but there was more. Much more, and much worse.

One of them was the thing that he is doing now.

When the CIA was created, just after World War II, it was understood that there might come a day when, given the sloppy nature of any democracy, the American people might vote in their own destruction. They could get a Manchurian Candidate, or possibly a Communist impostor, or just some double-talking !@#$ who railed against the Iron Curtain by day and lobbied to bring it to America by night.

There was also the possibility that a coup might take place. Certain pro-fascist businessmen had tried it back before the War. There was nothing to stop it from happening again.

Nothing but this one thing, here in the bowels of the building, behind several locked doors that the Director alone had full knowledge of, and the keys to.

The thing in question was the terrible responsibility that had been given to the Agency: the ability to kill an American President, and get away with it. If the NSA or The COMPANY had existed back then, they might have had it, instead. And the FBI was Hoover's child, and Hoover thought he could deep-six anyone at a moment's notice, without any help from anyone.

And indeed, he had.

But the CIA was seen to be the sane, older brother of the Intelligence family, back in those days. Unto their hands was given the supreme responsibility. And, to their credit, no matter how crazy or insane things got at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the Directors kept their hands off the kill switch.

Until now.

Now, things were different. Now there was an idiot in the Oval Office who, for whatever reason, was actually listening to what SPYGOD was saying. And SPYGOD was leading the country to ruin, one super-powered train-wreck at a time.

The Director had never liked the President. True, his predecessor and he and gotten along just fine, but his predecessor was fairly friendly to SPYGOD, too. So what did he know?

Besides, he was out of the picture, and highly unlikely to protest if the responsibility he'd kept secret for so long had to be used. What could he say, anyway? Nothing, if he knew what was good for him.

So the President would die. His Vice President would be putty in the hands of his new advisers. And the Director knew those advisers would persuade him to ditch the man-monster that was running The COMPANY. It was as simple as 1, 2, 3.

And after that little talk he'd had with SPYGOD -- or, rather, that SPYGOD had had with him -- it was clear the button had to be pushed. Half of the information in that welcoming envelope was now in the President's hands, thanks to SPYGOD. And if he read even a quarter of it, and had some weird, Midnight conscience attack in the bedroom...?

No. He had to die. It was a horrible thing, but it had to be done. The Director was just the man to do it.

The hallway ends in another door. The door swings open, once unlocked, and there's a long flight of dusty, cobwebbed stairs. He takes it down, wishing he had something other than his cell phone to light the way. Also wishing he'd thought about the trip, and what to bring.

Down the stairs and into a chamber. In the chamber is another, very old door. It's locked, but there is one last key on the ring. It slides into the lock like a !@#$ into a willing, wet !@#$, and the door creaks open.

The room behind seems empty, but there must be something in there. Why else would it lead here?

The Director walks in, and flashes his phone this way and that, looking for something in the gloom. He sees nothing at all. Just a small room, and a floor that seems scraped and pocked with holes.

There was something here, once. Something large and complicated. But now it's gone, leaving an empty room.

He wants to scream in rage. He wants to cry and bang his fists against the wall. He almost throws his phone against it in frustration, ready to walk back up the stairs and start thinking of alternatives.

But then he hears it. A scuffling, from back the way he came. Several scufflings, in fact.

Coming down the stairs.

He turns and heads back into the chamber, and flashes his light up the stairs. There are, indeed, figures moving down it. He can't quite see their faces, yet, just the fact that they're wearing robes.

"Hello, (REDACTED)," one of them says, voice gentle and soft as a teddy bear: "We've been waiting for you."

"Who are you?' He shouts, getting ready to call for help. Why doesn't he have his sidearm with him? Why?

"You won't need that," the leader says, extending her hands out for a hug: "The phone is useless, down here. No one knows you're here, and no one can hear you if you call.

"It's just you, and us."

"What do you want?" He asks, taking a step back.

"You, (REDACTED)," they say as one: "We want you."

And there is screaming in the secret room below the Agency, followed by half an hour of silence.

Some time later, the Director comes back into the part of the building everyone knows about. There's a smile on his face, perhaps belying the ordeal he has been through. Or did anything happen at all?

And as he walks back to his office, tossing the keyring into the trash as he does so, he's humming a song. Not one that anyone thought would be one of his favorites, really, but you never know.

Dum dum, dum dum, dum-dum-dum, dum-dum-dum

* * *

In the far reaches of the galaxy, far beyond and below our own solar system. something approaches. Something vast and timeless. Something implacable.

Something (UNINTELLIGIBLE)

Stars tremble in their slow orbits as it moves past. Dead and lifeless worlds crack and crumble. Some of these systems never had life.

Some did, once, before that something's final visit.

It is coming, now. There is no stopping it. No holding it back or denying its ultimate trajectory.

Towards Earth. Towards us.

* * *

And SPYGOD walks down a cold, Washington DC street to his next appointment, perhaps aware that he's on camera.

Perhaps not.

(SPYGOD is listening to Sinking (The Cure) and planning to buy several Virgils Bavarian Nutmeg Root Beers)

11/8-10 /11 - The Week of the Hunt pt. 1

11/8/11
5:38 PM
THE FLIER

His name was Thomas J. Olemacher. He was 34 years old.

Thomas went to school to become a forensic scientist, and was recruited by us right out of an impressively short time in graduate school. He spent the next ten years with The COMPANY, and spent the last five of them as a member of the Secret Chiefs.

He also spent the last three as an unwitting spy for The Legion. The Big Man had paid him a visit, and warped his brain around into spying on our every move and reporting back to them, usually while he thought he was somewhere else. He also quietly sabotaged a few actions against The Legion by disappearing key evidence and information. 

A few days ago I set up a test to see where the Legion's moles were. Once I figured out where they were, it was simpler to look after our people in that one group and look for suspicious activity. Poor Thomas gave himself away by going to a Synagogue on Sunday when, as we knew, he was as Catholic as the !@#$ Bear Pope. It wasn't too hard to figure out why, and what was being said, and to whom.

The other day he and I went for a walk. He didn't survive the trip. I slipped him slow-acting poison in his beer.

Today we buried him.

I said nothing about what had happened to him. I spoke of his fine service to his country and the great work he'd done with us. I told them he was a patriot and a public servant, a scientist, and a !@#$ fine line dancer.

And I said that it was always a sad thing when a tragedy takes someone so young and vital, so quickly and without warning.

As far as everyone knows, outside of a few people I can trust, he died from a sudden thrombosis. Sometimes a clot forms for no reason, bounces around in your blood stream, and smacks your brain with all the subtlety and mercy of a runaway garbage truck full of leftover 80's hair metal stars. One minute you're fine, the next minute Bon Jovi loudly informs you you're living on a prayer, and then you're not, anymore.

(Living, that is.)

The truth is that he'd spent several days hooked up to an N machine, having every last piece of information sucked out of his dead brain. And now that we've had time to analyze all that intel, we think we have a better idea of what The Big Man wanted to know, and possibly why.

And this will aid us in the next step: taking The Legion down for good.

I am not proud of this thing I have done. I lied to him in those last moments, telling him he'd be revived and then be free of what Biggs did to his brain.

The simple, easy to handle truth is that there's no cure for that affliction. The worse truth is that The Big Man's power over others is truly vicious. Not only does he program people to fight to the death if they're found out, but also do everything in their power to destroy themselves if they can't flee.

Especially the eyes.

The poison I used causes slow paralysis that just feels like drunken fatigue, at least until the end, when it feels more like an 800 pound gorilla is using you for an easy chair. It's hard to gouge out your own eyes to thwart an N machine scan if you can't even raise your arms.

He died feeling scared, a slave to The Big Man's cruel programming. I could see it in his eyes. If he could have pressed a button by blinking to teleport him into the heart of the Sun he'd have done it.

I held his head in my hands and lied to him. I told him he was safe and going to get better. I told him a million things, all of them kind and reassuring. But those were !@#$ lies.

All of them.

I made it all the way through the funeral without crying, and I'm not crying now. I'm sitting in my office, listening to my favorite Lush song, over and over, and drinking enough Johnnie Walker to kill Johnnie Walker, himself, and I am not crying.

I am thinking of vengeance, cold and complete.

I am dreaming of a day when the entire world's worth of America's enemies will have one face, and I can put my foot down on it. I am wishing for blood and revenge and the glorious feel of a gun in my hand when it goes off and hits someone right in the brains. I am rejoicing to have a target worth shooting at, again.

It's just some dust in my eyes. The strength of the whiskey. I am not crying.

I am not. !@#$. Crying.

11/9/11
8:01 AM

NEO YORK CITY
(AGENT ARMATRADING'S APARTMENT)


The room is a mess. It shouldn't be, but it is. There's clothes all over the floor along with books and magazines and the small knick-knacks that Sue spent a lifetime accumulating and enjoying.

It's her way of trying to break free. In those small moments when her body rages against the domination, when Agent S slackens his grip ever so slightly, she breaks things. She does this to try and send a message to someone who might realize it.

It does no good, though. This neighborhood is a !@#$hole where no one talks to their neighbor out of fear. The apartment tenants are inured to the noises created when things smash against walls, and people make choking cries at odd hours.

Sue took the room because the neglect made her feel safe. She thought it would unlikely that anyone would realize who she was, or what she did, in a dump like this. And, sadly, she was all too right.

Agent S allows her this temper tantrum, just as he allows her to scream and hurl abuse at his CIA associates, down in Virginia, who are watching her actual body. There's nothing she can do, here or there, and letting her have some hope actually aids in the process.

Truth be told he's come to respect her, however perversely. It will be a shame when the operation is done and she'll have to be terminated.

She'd have made a great asset. 

Agent S closes her eyes, and then opens his own. Black on black eyes shine, and when he reaches for the hidden communications device, and turns it on, it uses those uncanny and unique eyes to identify him, and not blow up half the building. The Director's on the line in moments, and they begin to confer.

(They'd initially agreed on meeting in Chamber Zero, but this proved more practical for a day to day basis.)

"Yes sir," he says through her lips: "I have it confirmed. He is going after The Legion, next. The entire thing about HONEYCOMB was a smokescreen to find The Legion's moles. Although HONEYCOMB is going to wind up in their crosshairs before too long, too.

...

"Yes. That was what that was about. He did away with the mole, himself. That was that funeral, yes. Quite touching, really. I think he was actually feeling guilty about that.

...

"Well, that is a problem, sir. Technically he hasn't done anything we could get him for. Internal security and discipline are nothing outlandish, and there's no way we could have him publicly or privately hoisted for that.

...

"Yes, it's on the schedule. The day after tomorrow. They've got strike teams all ready to go, nationwide. They may also be coordinating with a few foreign intelligence agencies."

...

"Well, I've been thinking about that, sir. There's all sorts of things that could shake loose if he took down The Legion. I know we don't want too many things to come to light. Between you and I, it could be very damaging.

...

"On the other hand, sir. If he does take them down, and does so very quietly, we'd no longer have that particular albatross around our necks. I don't think people are likely to take the word of several nonagenarian supercriminals against the sworn testimony of the CIA Director.

...

"I see. Yes. I understand, sir. Perfectly. In fact, I took the liberty of making a list of everyone who's in his crosshairs, if you need to have a look at it?"

...

"Oh, good. I'm glad. I'll send it to you now. And I'll continue monitoring the situation and see if I can turn it to our advantage, sir? He was pretty malleable after the funeral.

...

"Oh, it's working perfectly, sir. Excellent idea on manufacturing a death in the family. I've gotten some sympathies I might not have otherwise enjoyed.

...

"Of course, sir. I'll contact you tomorrow. Good morning, sir."

He takes out a flash drive and sticks it into the communications device, quickly sending a list to his superior. Then he turns the communications device off and hides it.

Then, satisfied that he's done as much as he can for the greater good this evening, he decides it's time to play. He lies back on the bed and reaches for the special drawer, and the fun things he bought to take full advantage of this luscious, shared anatomy.

And he lets her be conscious just enough to know what's going to happen, but not in control enough to do anything about it. 

Of course, she tries. She screams and fights him every step, every moment. It doesn't help, but it makes the moment of shared, unwelcome release all the sweeter for him.

Yes, a shame she has to die. But they all do. It's just part of the job.

11/10/11


The call goes out early in the morning. Across the country, indeed across the world, several dozen elderly men and women suddenly pick themselves up and leave their current circumstances.

From old folks' homes and retirement villages, assisted living situations and the houses of their grown children, even a few hospital beds, they vanish. One moment they're there, the next they're not.

Some vanishings are stranger than others. Some involve injuries to caretakers and security guards. Some astound and amaze, and others seem sad and pathetic -- especially when mystified spouses are left behind.

Some are not so successful. An ancient woman brandishes a strange weapon at her nurse and breaks her frail arm trying to fire it. An old man suffers a heart attack trying to lug a very heavy suitcase out the back elevator of his retirement home apartment tower.

Three hoodlums jump an old lady in her parking lot, and are atomized along with her when something strange goes off in her purse.

Bank accounts are emptied. Treasured possessions sold. Dusty, old trunks and suitcases that hadn't been touched in years are gone from storage, while more immediate things are left behind.

Other disappearances take place as well. Younger people, in these cases, or at least people who appeared younger. Investigating police often find confusing documents left behind. Evidence of alternate identities.

Suspicions that they were not quite who and what they claimed to be.

The news is slow to report the mystery, as always. And for some strange reason, remote COMPANY surveillance fails to register the mass vanishing, in spite of the fact that every person who vanishes that day was on a certain list that was going to see action less than 24 hours later. 

It's almost as if someone flipped an unseen switch while someone else made a phone call.

(SPYGOD is listening to Apart (The Cure) and drinking Johnnie Walker)

11/7/11 - They Are Legion - pt. 6

Heh, look at those tourists, all trying to get the best picture of the White House they can before going back home. They could probably just buy a !@#$ postcard, but they want their own picture, made by their own camera. They want to have something they made themselves to remember this occasion.

I've often thought that our Capitol's just one postcard after another. We make these perfect buildings, perfect iconic structures. And then we go to work in them and do horrible and imperfect things, just to make sure the ideas those buildings are built to house and embody can continue on another day.

I often think if the Founding Fathers came back here, today, and saw what we'd done with their experiment, they'd !@#$ themselves. I know what Ben Franklin thinks about it. There was that lost weekend in Las Vegas, back in the 70's. Him, me, and Jim Morrison, dealing with a threat so large and strange it took the three of us to even figure the !@#$ thing out for what it was.

And as for dealing with it, well...

Well, another story for another time. You look like !@#$, son. Maybe the apple beer disagreed with you? Or maybe too much SPYGOD storytime?

No? Well, I'll go on, then. You just rest. Hunt's almost done.

* * *

Where was I? Oh, right. The Legion, and the big scam they pulled on us during The War. Thanks to a certain missing firebomb that didn't wind up landing in Dresden, we found Firebug, who rolled over on the entire scheme once we nailed his !@#$ to the wall with red-hot staples. And it not only led back to The Big Man, but back to another source that was even more troubling.

It turned out that, after The War, Truman kept Roosevelt's promise. Everyone in the Left Handed Legion who'd upheld their part of the deal got a full pardon, a new identity, and all the well-done fake credentials you'd need to make that identity look as kosher as matzoh ball soup.

But he threw in a little wrinkle towards the end, there, and that's what's made all the difference.

The Office of Strategic Services had been broken up after The War, but its functions were too useful to just shove under the rug in peacetime. After it became clear the War Department couldn't handle the extra duties, they created the Central Intelligence Agency to shoulder some of the intelligence burden. The NSA got the rest, and, after Korea, along came The COMPANY.

But the other, little-c Company? They needed some propping up at the start. Especially since they had to hit the ground running and deal with the Commies, who, now that the war was over, were really no longer our friends in need.

And Truman wasn't about to let a bunch of indentured servants in spandex get out from under Uncle Sam's thumb. Not when the Soviets had a super-breeding program to rival the Nazis' and massive numbers of heroes in action.

Not that I can blame them for wanting to corner the market on Strategic Talents. The Liberty Patrol was pretty much it's own animal, and part of the animal was that it had to remain above board at all times. So there was no !@#$ way the Company was going to get them to go do some wetwork under the table.

No problem. They just found their own people do to nasty work.

Anyway, thanks to Firebug, and what he led us to, we found out that the Left Handed Legion had been handed over to the CIA to handle. They had them all over Europe, doing quiet things against our new enemy. No major superbattles or shadow wars or anything like that, because it would have attracted WAY too much attention to what was supposed to be covert operations.

But some of those quiet things....

I mean, you know me, son. I'm no shrieking violet. I'd skull!@#$ Jesus Christ on television for America if I had to. Deny the asset to the enemy with a bullet between the eyes? Win hearts and minds with a large gun? Destroy the village to save it? All in a day's work, sometimes. It's the price of freedom. Always has been.

But some of those things they had them doing... Slaughter for no real purpose. Terror for its own sake. Kill first and ask questions never.

That !@#$'s just wrong, son. It's the kind of !@#$ supposedly civilized countries say are wrong, no matter what, and condemn other countries for doing. It's what America says you're not supposed to do, at least not to us or our allies. And it's the sort of !@#$ we look like compete schmucks when we get caught doing it ourselves.

And they were doing it on alternate days of the week, just to keep the Iron Curtain from creeping any further West than it already had.

You can imagine that I was not happy. Not one !@#$ bit. Bad enough we went in with The Big Man in the first place to win the war, but now this? !@#$ that.

So I took what I knew and went straight to the President. He was not happy, either, but figured his hands were tied. How could he publicize the fact that President Roosevelt had made this deal? How could he reveal that President Truman had added this wrinkle and had supervillains doing black ops for the CIA all this time? And how could he let The COMPANY punish the other Company when there were so many balls in the air, and the red nukes might fly at any moment?

This was the 60's, after all. If you didn't grow up in the Cold War you have no idea how scary it can be to wake up and know there's a nuke aimed at your head. It makes you crazy, after a while. And when you're crazy you do all kinds of crazy things.

Now, your average person would be shouting bull!@#$ and wanting to get the New York Times up everyone's !@#$ with a camera and a microphone. But that's why we don't let average people into intelligence. They have no stomach for the way things actually work, and in the world where these things actually work these were all legitimate concerns.

So I took my legitimate concerns down the way, over to John's office, and invited him and Clyde out for lunch. During that lunch we all had a little discussion about the issue, and some files may have been handed under the table. John may or may not have looked at those hypothetical files, and scowled that delightful little "I really need to !@#$ on someone's head right now" scowl of his.

I may have also said "I know what Roosevelt told you when you wanted to quit. He said he needed his best man at hand when they turned around and !@#$ us. That time is now."

And we may have left that lunch feeling just a little closer than we did walking into it.

* * *

You can probably guess what happened, then. A lot of the CIA's supervillain assets went down overnight in lightning FBI raids. If the President had any complaints he didn't care to make them, and as for the CIA, well... they kept their !@#$ mouths shut.

But we always got the feeling that we didn't quite get all of them. The Big Man was shot down in a hail of bullets, but we've already talked about him and his powers. He was back in charge of things before you knew what was going on.

What was he in charge of, now? A whole new organization.

See, it's that chess game thing, again. He knew !@#$ well that the subterfuge with the Company was only going to last for so long. So while they were out in the world, following orders, they had another set from The Big Man, just like back during The War. Only this time, the orders weren't "steal !@#$," but "make deals."

Make deals with weapons suppliers. Make deals with someone who could make them a very scary mobile headquarters. Make deals with everyone they could to get additional funding and employers, all the while working the primary angle that kept them well-paid and well-hidden.

By the time we ran into them again, they were The Legion. They had the Skull and weren't shy about showing it off. They orchestrated all kinds of scary, high-tech jobs to keep them in money and power. And they had their own recruitment bureau, credit cards, front companies, spy rings, you name it.

They also had doomsday devices. Several, in fact, all scattered around the world and ready to be blown off at a moment's notice. Which made fighting them the right thing to do, but completely eliminating them kind of dicey. No one wants to blow up the skull and find out it's wired to a dozen nukes in a deep sea trench somewhere, now do they?

No, didn't think so. Or are you just falling asleep on me?

No? Okay. Just checking.

* * *

So that's where we are now, son. About to take on the organization that fooled the American Government and got several Presidents to feed them exactly what they needed, or just look the other way.

They know I'm coming after them. That's probably why they went out of their way to try and kill me the other month. They were probably hoping if they cut the head off the snake, the next head would be a lot more careful about doing the obvious thing.

To me, that means they're !@#$ scared. That whole "hire every assassin in the book and throw it at a target" !@#$ is way beneath them. I have a hard time believing that The Big Man actually okayed that, come to think of it.

But hey, even mega-geniuses make mistakes. After all, he keeps leaving himself wide open when he works on widening his spy ring. He does it in person, finding suckers and then using his powers on them to turn them into spies and saboteurs.

Now, yeah, he's got his act down pat and perfect. But it's still massively risky for him to be doing it, even if he's so innocuous at his age. I guess when you can't die, but you can age, you end up looking like a harmless old man after a while, instead of the devil incarnate.

Which is why you probably didn't think twice when that old guy knocked on your door, a couple years back, and struck up a conversation. Right, son?

No, it's okay. Don't try to move, son. Just sit still. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm not mad at you.

I want you to think back to that day. He said he was from up the block, looking for a friend's house. That's what he told you, right?

Yes, son. You can nod. That is what he said, right?

Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what Biggs always !@#$ says when he goes hunting for moles. It's like a nervous tic. You'd think someone as smart as he is would vary his shtick every few years or so.

And that's how he got his hooks into you. One conversation, just once, and you've been feeding him information ever since. You haven't meant to or even wanted to, and I bet you don't remember doing it when it's done.

But you've been doing it, son. Every Sunday when you thought you were in church.

Yeah, you can't move. Paralysis. It's a side effect of the poison I slipped you in your apple beer, back in the bar. You can't hardly taste it in apple beer. It's like it was made for the stuff.

No, don't worry. Well, maybe a little. You see, I was telling you the truth. I was on the hunt, and someone was going to die today.

And it's going to be you.

No, I'm not mad at you son. You remember what I said? Biggs' !@#$ mind trick only works on good people. Good people. That's you. You're the victim, here.

And I'm going to make sure he pays for this. 

Yeah, I'm sorry too. But don't worry. You won't be dead for too long. There's an ambulance on the way now with a full crash cart, and we'll only wait as long as a minute before turning you back on again. There shouldn't be any significant damage.

But the good news is that, once it's over, you won't be under The Big Man's influence, anymore. You'll be free again.

And, best of all, you'll remember everything. Everything he told you to tell him, everything he told you to forget, every instruction he gave you. You'll remember it, and we'll use it to nail the dirty !@#$ for good this time.

Yeah. It's okay. Just breathe. You're doing fine, son. Just close your eyes and think of America. Think of her standing tall and brave, safe and sound. You made a promise to keep her that way, and now you get to keep it.

Just like I'm keeping my promise to you.

Good job, son. Sleep. You've earned it.

Sleep and wake up free.

(SPYGOD is listening to A Forest (The Cure) and having a nip of New York Apple Whiskey)