Her name is Victoria Rey, 76 years old. She's 5 foot 2, blood type A-positive, and deathly allergic to bee stings.
Bullets, too, I figure. As soon as she comes downstairs, we're going to find out.
Victoria lives in a nice house in the suburbs of Hartford, Connecticut. She used to teach psychology at nearby Trinity College, and had a reputation for being demanding and directing, but her students still speak highly of her.
(Her colleagues, not so much, but they were clearly jealous of this uppity woman who came from seemingly nowhere, twenty years ago, and showed them all up.)
She retired a few years back, after her husband, Gerald, died of cancer. Now well-paid gardeners keep the lawn green and the flowers perfect. She tips them well for their trouble.
Not that she stays in all day, re-reading the photo albums and crying. She directs the choir at her church, works with the developmentally disabled, and occasionally helps staff the volunteer suicide hotline.
Ask anyone on Turnbull St. and they'll tell you that Ms. Rey's the quintessential nice old lady from down the block. She knows all the neighborhood kids, bakes cookies for neighbors, and is always willing to lend an ear.
But that doesn't explain why I'm in her kitchen, eating her cookies, and waiting for her to come downstairs so I can kill her, now does it?
That's because Victoria Rey is actually Regina King. AKA Mindqueen, mistress of mind control: a name you may not remember unless you're one of those obsessive supervillian spotters with a taste for cheesy, one-note villains from the sixties.
Me, I remember her. All too !@#$ well.
So how did Ms. Rey get here, then? It's a long story, but I think I can shorten it up, here. It sounds like she's finishing dressing and is about to come down, anyway.
You've heard me mention the Legion, now and again. It's like a mutual aid society and job clearing house for supervillains and solo science terrorists. They have a roster of folks who are willing to do jobs for third parties, facilities to bid on those jobs, and a network of invisible aides who aid and abet them, and sometimes even clean up the mess if the job goes down the !@#$ toilet.
Sound like a good deal, son? Well, it isn't, but it does have its benefits, especially if you're a super-powered sociopath with negligible social skills and no sense for getting ahead by getting along.
How do you join? Well, once you've proven that you've not just a one-hit wonder, and have pulled off a few audacious schemes, they'll find you. They'll come right out of nowhere, like smoke, and make a very convincing pitch for joining.
(And, yes, son, at that point refusal is not a viable option.)
When you sign up you agree to hand over 10% of all future earnings in exchange for use of their services, facilities, and aides. This essentially means that they own your !@#$ !@#$ in perpetuity, but no one gets into that life with any illusions of ever getting out.
No one sane or sensible, anyway.
Mindqueen joined the Legion back in 1959. She was 24, scrawny as !@#$, and had just come off a long, dusty stretch of calling herself Brainlady and getting nowhere.
Now, I'm sure that, judging from her name, you can guess what her game was. She had the ability to control people's minds, make them do what she wanted. It was all thanks to a really stupid looking helmet that she inherited from her father, Robert King, who invented it back before the War and gave the and early costumed heroes a number of headaches as, you guessed it, The Brain.
He had a good run, too, actually. The Brain was very much a gentleman thief. He used his gimmick, got the goods, got out, and paid his henchmen well. He never mistreated the people he robbed or held for ransom, never killed anyone, and never allowed anyone to be killed.
He thought it was all a game, basically. And maybe it was to him.
But in the end, his gentleman nature was his undoing. German saboteurs tried to recruit him in '43 but he refused, citing his love of country, if disdain for its laws. So they shot him full of lead and tossed him in the harbor as a warning to other science villains to play along.
His daughter, Regina, was in on the game from the get go, and eventually inherited his mantle. She had his smarts, and also his secret plans, but didn't have any of his ethics. This became all too clear when she burst on the scene as Brainlady, and threatened to make an entire bank's worth of customers walk off the roof to their deaths unless the police let her walk out unmolested with the goods.
And then she let some of them jump, anyway, just for laughs.
She had a good thing going, but she needed some panache. A contact in the criminal underground got her in touch with some image people, and they gave her a good makeover. They changed her name, got her a better costume, more competent henchmen.
And when she became Mindqueen, and started stealing things to help with more complicated future crimes, the Legion took notice, and gave her a trial run. Saying she performed perfectly was putting it mildly; nasty !@#$ impressed even them with her cold blooded ruthlessness.
She was never one of the big names. She wasn't flashy or omnipresent, and kept it pretty low-key so as to avoid developing a hero nemesis. But the word was that if you needed a person who would brain-pilot someone into doing something they didn't want to do, she was the one to call.
Then came the thing that made her name. The Senator Smith kidnapping. Someone wanted him to not sign some key legislation, back in the late 70's, and he needed a little convincing. So they set her up with a job to kidnap him and his immediate family, and show him the error of his ways, however she saw fit.
How she saw fit was to line them up on I-495, outside D.C., and make them run into oncoming traffic, trying to pilot them into just missing the cars while he watched, helpless and screaming. At some point she decided the near misses were no fun and started trying to make them hit the cars, and wound up killing everyone but his daughter and one of his grandsons.
(Then had him go vote no, and hang himself in his office, before the D.C. police realized that his family was splattered all over the outer belt.)
Senator Smith was from Oklahoma. So is Mr. USA. They were close friends. So you can imagine that, from that point on, the sick !@#$ had finally gotten herself that nemesis she'd spent so long avoiding. And he hounded her like a dog for years thereafter.
At some point, maybe 20 years ago, after enough close calls to turn her hair stark white, she decided she'd had enough. So she took advantage of one of the Legion's other services: retirement.
The deal is simple. They take your tools and talents, and sometimes your powers, and give them to someone who will be your successor. This is usually bid upon, and you might be shocked at how much virtual nobodies will pay to become a legacy supervillain.
As for you, they implant a memory lock, so that your time as a science terrorist is blocked off in your brain, but not erased. They may have need of your skills or memories sometime in the future, after all. They also give you a new identity, a package of fake memories, and a paper trail that sets you up good for the rest of your life.
That's how Regina King came to be Victoria Rey. Gerald was just one of her favorite henchmen, Joey, turned into her husband so she'd have some company. The rest of her gang was sold to the person who's been Brainwave for the last twenty years or so.
Or at least until a day ago, when his world came crashing down around him. It seems that parties unknown invaded his hideout and shot him and his henchmen in the eyes before leaving with all of his goodies.
The same parties unknown who've been quietly observing the Legion for years, since certain, former members made a deal for amnesty (or at least getting out of death row) in exchange for their aid in sneaking into the Legion's supposedly surveillance-proof internal communications.
And the same parties unknown who no doubt "discovered" the brain pilot helmet in Seoul, along with a bunch of dead science terrorists. The science terrorists who were working on destroying all evidence tying them to an attempt to influence yours truly to do something really bad.
Like, say, peeing on General Park's grave.
The same parties unknown who keep a roster of retired supervillains that we can dust off and use as patsies when necessary, and plant evidence of their involvement in something shady we may have done, ourselves. Evidence like the things that lead from Seoul to this very house, where a certain missing supervillain had been lending her long-distance expertise to that questionable operation.
The supervillain who's just coming down the stairs now.
She'll turn to the left when she gets down the stairs, which is when I'll allow her to see me. I will give her exactly a split second to wonder who I am before I let the SPYGOD VISION loose on her, and deactivate the mind block. This will mean she'll remember who I am, and what it means for me to be here, in her kitchen, holding a gun.
One shot to the back, I think. Right between the shoulderblades. It'll leave her weak but alive, and I'll walk slowly behind her as she tries to crawl away for help. She might even have the unmitigated !@#$ gall to beg me for mercy.
Me, I'm going to eat some more of these delicious cookies and let her !@#$ bleed to death. It's a better death than she deserves, but it's the only one this narrative will really let me do.
(That and two to the eyes, just to make sure my version of the truth is the only one that can ever come out.)
No, Mr. President. You do not want to know about these kinds of things. This is sick, even by my standards. Sick and black and arguably evil.
But I got to see what was left of that Senator's family when they scraped them off I-495, more than 30 years ago. I got to hear the stories of how Ms. King ate out on the story when she was out with her friends, before they all ran away from her for fear of Mr. USA catching up with them, too. I got to know that she'd gone into hiding from herself, cheating us of a proper, clean capture and trial.
It's not exactly justice, son. Not even close. But today, here and now, it'll just have to do.
(SPYGOD is listening to Serial Killers Don't Kill their Girlfriend (Front 242) and eating !@#$ good peanut butter cookies)
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Saturday, September 3, 2011
9/2/11 - This Is the Working Hour
For a scary moment this morning, I completely forgot myself.
I heard a terrible alarm and assumed the worst. So I jumped out of the cunning bed my apparent captors had made for me, threw the katooey out of the prison cell that looked an awful lot like my actual room in the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., and shot the living !@#$ out of my alarm clock for having the total !@#$ gumption to go off at 5 in the !@#$ AM when I'd been out drinking, dancing, and !@#$ing my !@#$ off in Seoul the night before.
Then I heard METALMAID singing that one song she always sings when she makes my Hunter's breakfast (off an early Gary Numan album, I think) and realized that I was not in captivity. I was just experiencing another case of what people tend to call morning amnesia, only most people don't punctuate their fits with gunshots, roundhouse kicks, and SPYGOD vision.
(And how I got from there to here, and got something approximating a half a night's sleep, even after the President called me at 3 in the !@#$ AM is a bit of a trade secret, son. Don't ask.)
Back to the grind, then. Several head-sized screwdrivers. Enough coffee to sink a banana boat. Rum soaked fruit, eggs benedict, and good homemade speed. Tjbang sticks. Another quick goodbye !@#$ with the one who doesn't scream.
(Note to self: METALMAID no longer seems as cheery. What the !@#$ is up with that slaughterbot? Should have her checked out. Soon. When things settle down.)
Flier comes around on time, for once. I jump off the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. and onto the crash deck, narrowly missing a VTOL on its way out. A couple hand signals and we're all cool. I just tell him it was a training exercise. Really.
This morning is just chock full of excitement. First up is a pre-meeting meeting with section heads. Then I have a pre-meeting meeting with the Heptagon. Then the real meeting with Washington and the section heads and some two-headed zebra who speaks French, none of which goes according to any semblance of a plan.
Especially when the zebra starts singing Justin Bieber just to show us how hip he is. If he wasn't triple-endangered we'd be having zebra burgers for lunch in the commissary today, I swear to !@#$.
(And no, I am not on drugs. Well, more drugs than usual. This !@#$ zebra is real. But no one can tell me how he got this high of a clearance, which kind of worries me.)
After all that, we go over the data we got from our little adventure in Incheon. The good news is that we may be able to narrow down exactly what HONEYCOMB did to these people, which means we can extrapolate what they may have done to others. If we can do that, we can possibly detect the sleeper agents they've got out there, around the world, and do something to handle them before they wake up and start blowing !@#$ up.
By handle, I mean "not kill." I'd really rather we kept this as non-lethal as possible. But if that doesn't work, I've got the spin teams working on some possible ideas for explaining this one away.
(None of them sound like anything I'd want to say while looking at myself in the mirror. Not while sober, anyway.)
Lunchtime is a seminar about using our new portable consoles. I call a halt to it about halfway through when I realize the contractor telling us how to do our work doesn't have the right security clearances to be here in the first place. Hilarity ensues as I dangle his !@#$ out the window and ask him to tell us who he's really working for. He !@#$ himself but won't say anything but the name of his supervisor, who I call on the phone with the new portable console (just to show they've gotten their money's worth on that seminar) and send pictures to ensure he cooperates.
Yes, it turned out to be a false alarm. But you never can tell in this line of work. Also, the lunch being served was horrible, even by our standards, so it gives me an excuse to order up some decent food for a change. There is much rejoicing, even from the zebra, which strikes me as odd.
After lunch, there's more talking about what we've found in South Korea. The results can't come fast enough for me, but trying to get directly involved does not help. Neither does sticking guns in the faces of those doing the work, as I soon discover. I go back to my office, masturbate vigorously, and try to shoot down passing weather balloons with love pellets. I do not miss.
The President calls about something important a while later. I blow him off, and then wonder why. Then I realize that something really !@#$ weird has been staring me in the face all day long.
That !@#$ing zebra.
I go after the black and white striped !@#$ with extreme prejudice, but by the time I storm the conference room, guns dragging behind me like a ghost's chains, it's already gone. Turns out we were invaded, again. Clever thing came down and shifted our brains around to accept the absurdity of the situation.
Even mine, which is saying something.
Unfortunately for Mr. Zebra, my hat of alien invasions know no limit. I know what he looks like, and I know how to track him. So I call up the head of DAMOCLES and tell him to nail the thing that looks like a flying two-headed zebra in a big orange bubble that's just crossing the Moon's orbit at that very !@#$ moment.
For some weird reason, he complies. Scratch one flying two-headed French zebra with an unnatural interest in a young singer. This is also cause for celebration, once I have a few words with the jack!@#$es that run our security around this floating party barge. We clearly need something that will deal with these kinds of situations, and I won't be taking "IDK" for an answer this time around.
Around 8 in the PM I call the working day over, and have the Flier drop me off at The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. BeeBee's asleep on a pile of guns when I come in so I leave her the !@#$ alone, order up some Indian from the place that's now just down the block, and settle in for a night of taped TV shows, chicken curry so spicy it'll make the ceiling melt, and enough Kingfisher to get every Dalit in New Delhi drunker than !@#$.
I may also shoot out the TV if I don't like the cut of its jib, but after the day I've had, I think I'm entitled.
(SPYGOD is listening to One Nation Under a Groove (Parliament/Funkadelic) and enjoying that Kingfisher.)
I heard a terrible alarm and assumed the worst. So I jumped out of the cunning bed my apparent captors had made for me, threw the katooey out of the prison cell that looked an awful lot like my actual room in the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G., and shot the living !@#$ out of my alarm clock for having the total !@#$ gumption to go off at 5 in the !@#$ AM when I'd been out drinking, dancing, and !@#$ing my !@#$ off in Seoul the night before.
Then I heard METALMAID singing that one song she always sings when she makes my Hunter's breakfast (off an early Gary Numan album, I think) and realized that I was not in captivity. I was just experiencing another case of what people tend to call morning amnesia, only most people don't punctuate their fits with gunshots, roundhouse kicks, and SPYGOD vision.
(And how I got from there to here, and got something approximating a half a night's sleep, even after the President called me at 3 in the !@#$ AM is a bit of a trade secret, son. Don't ask.)
Back to the grind, then. Several head-sized screwdrivers. Enough coffee to sink a banana boat. Rum soaked fruit, eggs benedict, and good homemade speed. Tjbang sticks. Another quick goodbye !@#$ with the one who doesn't scream.
(Note to self: METALMAID no longer seems as cheery. What the !@#$ is up with that slaughterbot? Should have her checked out. Soon. When things settle down.)
Flier comes around on time, for once. I jump off the B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. and onto the crash deck, narrowly missing a VTOL on its way out. A couple hand signals and we're all cool. I just tell him it was a training exercise. Really.
This morning is just chock full of excitement. First up is a pre-meeting meeting with section heads. Then I have a pre-meeting meeting with the Heptagon. Then the real meeting with Washington and the section heads and some two-headed zebra who speaks French, none of which goes according to any semblance of a plan.
Especially when the zebra starts singing Justin Bieber just to show us how hip he is. If he wasn't triple-endangered we'd be having zebra burgers for lunch in the commissary today, I swear to !@#$.
(And no, I am not on drugs. Well, more drugs than usual. This !@#$ zebra is real. But no one can tell me how he got this high of a clearance, which kind of worries me.)
After all that, we go over the data we got from our little adventure in Incheon. The good news is that we may be able to narrow down exactly what HONEYCOMB did to these people, which means we can extrapolate what they may have done to others. If we can do that, we can possibly detect the sleeper agents they've got out there, around the world, and do something to handle them before they wake up and start blowing !@#$ up.
By handle, I mean "not kill." I'd really rather we kept this as non-lethal as possible. But if that doesn't work, I've got the spin teams working on some possible ideas for explaining this one away.
(None of them sound like anything I'd want to say while looking at myself in the mirror. Not while sober, anyway.)
Lunchtime is a seminar about using our new portable consoles. I call a halt to it about halfway through when I realize the contractor telling us how to do our work doesn't have the right security clearances to be here in the first place. Hilarity ensues as I dangle his !@#$ out the window and ask him to tell us who he's really working for. He !@#$ himself but won't say anything but the name of his supervisor, who I call on the phone with the new portable console (just to show they've gotten their money's worth on that seminar) and send pictures to ensure he cooperates.
Yes, it turned out to be a false alarm. But you never can tell in this line of work. Also, the lunch being served was horrible, even by our standards, so it gives me an excuse to order up some decent food for a change. There is much rejoicing, even from the zebra, which strikes me as odd.
After lunch, there's more talking about what we've found in South Korea. The results can't come fast enough for me, but trying to get directly involved does not help. Neither does sticking guns in the faces of those doing the work, as I soon discover. I go back to my office, masturbate vigorously, and try to shoot down passing weather balloons with love pellets. I do not miss.
The President calls about something important a while later. I blow him off, and then wonder why. Then I realize that something really !@#$ weird has been staring me in the face all day long.
That !@#$ing zebra.
I go after the black and white striped !@#$ with extreme prejudice, but by the time I storm the conference room, guns dragging behind me like a ghost's chains, it's already gone. Turns out we were invaded, again. Clever thing came down and shifted our brains around to accept the absurdity of the situation.
Even mine, which is saying something.
Unfortunately for Mr. Zebra, my hat of alien invasions know no limit. I know what he looks like, and I know how to track him. So I call up the head of DAMOCLES and tell him to nail the thing that looks like a flying two-headed zebra in a big orange bubble that's just crossing the Moon's orbit at that very !@#$ moment.
For some weird reason, he complies. Scratch one flying two-headed French zebra with an unnatural interest in a young singer. This is also cause for celebration, once I have a few words with the jack!@#$es that run our security around this floating party barge. We clearly need something that will deal with these kinds of situations, and I won't be taking "IDK" for an answer this time around.
Around 8 in the PM I call the working day over, and have the Flier drop me off at The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G. BeeBee's asleep on a pile of guns when I come in so I leave her the !@#$ alone, order up some Indian from the place that's now just down the block, and settle in for a night of taped TV shows, chicken curry so spicy it'll make the ceiling melt, and enough Kingfisher to get every Dalit in New Delhi drunker than !@#$.
I may also shoot out the TV if I don't like the cut of its jib, but after the day I've had, I think I'm entitled.
(SPYGOD is listening to One Nation Under a Groove (Parliament/Funkadelic) and enjoying that Kingfisher.)
9/1/11 - Talking with the President
(PHONE CALL BEGINS, 3AM EST)
OPERATOR: Hello, is this SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: It !@#$ well is, sweetie. Who the !@#$ is this?
OPERATOR: Please stand by to receive a call from the President of the United States of--
SPYGOD: Blah blah !@#$ blah. Put him on, !@#$ it.
POTUS: Hello, SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: No, this is his Asian stunt double, Fred. SPYGOD's out back smoking a cigar the size of a battleship. And you wouldn't believe who it's attached to.
POTUS: Um, okay. I don't think I want to know what that meant.
SPYGOD: Well that's why I'm in charge of The COMPANY, Mr. President. I go places you don't want to go, see things above your pay grade, and !@#$ them in the !@#$ with guns for America.
POTUS: I see. So there was some overriding issue of national security that necessitated your publicly urinating on the grave of General Park Chung-hee, last night?
SPYGOD: Well, no... not really, sir. Spending the previous two days !@#$ing !@#$ up in Incheon was an issue of national security. Peeing on that !@#$'s grave was just stress relief. And overdue revenge.
POTUS: *sighs* Okay, you know, this is not how I expected this call to go.
SPYGOD: If you called to hear me say the magic "sorry" word, sir, you are sorely mistaken. I regret nothing.
POTUS: You... regret nothing?
SPYGOD: That's !@#$ right.
POTUS: Look, I get a phone call telling me that the Seoul police found you roaring drunk, buck naked, and peeing on the grave of one of their national heroes--
SPYGOD: Actually, I was still wearing my high heels, sir.
POTUS: Look--
SPYGOD: The red ones that light up, act as backup phones, and spray eyeball-eating gas out the back.
POTUS: You know--
SPYGOD: Which, you'll be happy to know, were not used on the park police when they came by and did their honest duty. In fact, if you ask them you'll find I was a perfect gentleman once they explained the magnitude of my error.
POTUS: They say you tried to start a homosexual orgy--
SPYGOD: And the only people who think General Park was a !@#$ hero are all in their !@#$ 70's and dropping like flies. The man was a dirty !@#$ bastard who ran disappearance squads and put a rubber stamp on HONEYCOMB using their people as test subjects.
POTUS: Yes, I have read your initial report--
SPYGOD: They should be lucky I didn't eat half the bulgogi in town and take an elephant-sized !@#$ on his grave! Except I think it'd probably gain some weird kind of sentience and go eat a few buildings.
POTUS: SPYGOD...
SPYGOD: I mean, sometimes I think I hear my !@#$ screaming when I flush the commode. Have you ever had that happen to you?
POTUS: The President of South Korea is furious. I'm furious. The only reason the press isn't having a field day with this is because Libya is in the headlines, right now!
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet they are. Did you tell my friends in the other Company that they should have been a little more careful when they got into bed with Khaddafy's people? There's a reason we wear protection in this business.
POTUS: I've already had words with them.
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet you told them.
POTUS: Now that's just--
SPYGOD: You know I can hear them laughing right now, right? Something about a dumb-!@#$ moron who doesn't understand how this business works reprimanding them for taking any avenue they could in order to deal with a potential asset, in spite of his numerous shortcomings.
POTUS: Well, yes, the Director did mention that.
SPYGOD: Minus the parts about your being a dumb-!@#$, I'm sure.
POTUS: Well, what do you want me to say?
SPYGOD: The truth would be a nice thing, once in a while. But we know you have a problem with that, don't we, Mr. President?
POTUS: Oh, Jesus !@#$ Christ. That is it. I want your letter of resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow morning, once you sober up and make it back to D.C.
SPYGOD: No.
POTUS: No? What the !@#$ do you mean no?
SPYGOD: I mean no, Mr. President. I am not resigning. You will have to fire me.
POTUS: I thought I just did.
SPYGOD: No, you asked me to resign. That's something entirely different. That makes it sound like it's my idea, and then you can always say you're sorry to see me go. If you have to fire me, that's a whole different busload of prison fish.
POTUS: Not from where I'm standing.
SPYGOD: Then sit down a second, sir. Because then you have to say why. And then you have to explain why this particular excretory outburst from yours truly is any different from any other time I've whipped the glowing alien mansnake out and peed on something sacred. And then you have to explain to everyone, which includes your colleagues, your own intelligence agencies, the worldwide intelligence community, and, most importantly, the American voting public, why this was necessary. And what the blazing living !@#$ are you going to tell them?
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't tell them a god!@#$ thing because there is nothing. To. Tell. I get drunk, I get !@#$ up, I shoot guns at people who probably don't deserve it, I expose myself in public, and have probably done even more outrageous and inappropriate things than you and I both know about because my overworked but well-compensated COMPANY spin teams are so good that sometimes they can even reverse the !@#$ flow of time itself. And yet, if you ask most Americans about good old SPYGOD, they give me a glowing 95% approval rating almost every !@#$ time.
POTUS: Because you killed Hitler.
SPYGOD: Because I killed Hitler. Because I kept the commies from nuking us back in the Cold War. Because I fought SQUASH to a standstill, and beyond. Because I helped keep those idiot Jihadis from flying planes into buildings. Because when the Computer Hell Virus hit NYC, I was the one who held it off while Dr. Yesterday and his people found the way to stop it. Because when GORGON takes over a town, or HONEYCOMB pulls another science raid, or the Legion's in fine form yet again, I'm the one who rolls in and deals with their !@#$. Because I just blew up Outland, and stomped ABWEHR, and--
POTUS: After years of letting them slide. After years of sitting on your !@#$ and letting them get away with murder just so you could stop them from doing something worse.
SPYGOD: ... I know. It was the way we used to do things. I never liked it.
POTUS: You never liked it? Well that's good to know, SPYGOD. Now imagine me having to realize that I'd inherited that terrible history the moment I stepped into this position. Imagine me now knowing that I was partially responsible for all those deaths. When I read the report when I got into the Oval Office I had to not cry.
SPYGOD: Well at least you fought crying. Your predecessor just shrugged it the !@#$ off.
POTUS: You never did like him, did you?
SPYGOD: No, but I don't like you, either.
POTUS: Gee, thanks.
SPYGOD: The difference is I would like to like you, Mr. President. You seem like someone who actually thinks about things, once in a while. Your predecessor left that up to his cabinet. We all know how that went.
POTUS: We can't think of everything. That's why we have a cabinet.
SPYGOD: And you can't deal with everything, either. That's why you have people like me.
POTUS: And the other Company.
SPYGOD: Whether we can trust them to clean up after their own !@#$ mess or not.
POTUS: So what are you suggesting, here? I can't just let this slide.
SPYGOD: Mind control.
POTUS: What?
SPYGOD: I was under mind control. We'll blame someone disposable from the Legion. I'll go deal with him or her with extreme prejudice, probably well overdue. And then we can all laugh about it the next time we're at the UN.
POTUS: Are you... are you !@#$ing with me?
SPYGOD: In return, I won't say anything about the real reason you wanted me out of Ice Palace.
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Remember, SPYGOD hears all.
POTUS: So where's GORGON?
SPYGOD: ... we're working on it.
POTUS: I certainly hope so.
SPYGOD: Mr. President, back when we started The COMPANY, I promised the President at the time that we would, forever more, do our best to protect America from all threats beyond the scope of normal intelligence to handle. Maybe we haven't always been successful, and maybe some of the things we've done to do it have been questionable. But in the end we've done our best. I don't go for the whole 'history will judge us' bull!@#$ because it doesn't mean anything in the here and now, and that's what ultimately matters at the end of the day. But if I can keep us all alive and safe for another day, I call it a day well spent. Even if it involves me peeing on General Park's grave for an entire hour when I clock out.
POTUS: There's gonna come a time when your best won't be good enough, SPYGOD. You do know that, don't you?
SPYGOD: Maybe more than you realize, sir.
POTUS: Okay, then. Mind control. I'll let you have your spin teams handle the fallout. Try not to make a mess of it, okay?
SPYGOD: I think we'll be alright, sir. This isn't my first round of Blame The Bad Guy, you know.
POTUS: I know. That's what scares me.
SPYGOD: Good afternoon, sir.
(CALL TERMINATED AT SEOUL END)
(SPYGOD is listening to I Am The Best (2NE1) and drinking a suspicious microbrew in Seoul)
OPERATOR: Hello, is this SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: It !@#$ well is, sweetie. Who the !@#$ is this?
OPERATOR: Please stand by to receive a call from the President of the United States of--
SPYGOD: Blah blah !@#$ blah. Put him on, !@#$ it.
POTUS: Hello, SPYGOD?
SPYGOD: No, this is his Asian stunt double, Fred. SPYGOD's out back smoking a cigar the size of a battleship. And you wouldn't believe who it's attached to.
POTUS: Um, okay. I don't think I want to know what that meant.
SPYGOD: Well that's why I'm in charge of The COMPANY, Mr. President. I go places you don't want to go, see things above your pay grade, and !@#$ them in the !@#$ with guns for America.
POTUS: I see. So there was some overriding issue of national security that necessitated your publicly urinating on the grave of General Park Chung-hee, last night?
SPYGOD: Well, no... not really, sir. Spending the previous two days !@#$ing !@#$ up in Incheon was an issue of national security. Peeing on that !@#$'s grave was just stress relief. And overdue revenge.
POTUS: *sighs* Okay, you know, this is not how I expected this call to go.
SPYGOD: If you called to hear me say the magic "sorry" word, sir, you are sorely mistaken. I regret nothing.
POTUS: You... regret nothing?
SPYGOD: That's !@#$ right.
POTUS: Look, I get a phone call telling me that the Seoul police found you roaring drunk, buck naked, and peeing on the grave of one of their national heroes--
SPYGOD: Actually, I was still wearing my high heels, sir.
POTUS: Look--
SPYGOD: The red ones that light up, act as backup phones, and spray eyeball-eating gas out the back.
POTUS: You know--
SPYGOD: Which, you'll be happy to know, were not used on the park police when they came by and did their honest duty. In fact, if you ask them you'll find I was a perfect gentleman once they explained the magnitude of my error.
POTUS: They say you tried to start a homosexual orgy--
SPYGOD: And the only people who think General Park was a !@#$ hero are all in their !@#$ 70's and dropping like flies. The man was a dirty !@#$ bastard who ran disappearance squads and put a rubber stamp on HONEYCOMB using their people as test subjects.
POTUS: Yes, I have read your initial report--
SPYGOD: They should be lucky I didn't eat half the bulgogi in town and take an elephant-sized !@#$ on his grave! Except I think it'd probably gain some weird kind of sentience and go eat a few buildings.
POTUS: SPYGOD...
SPYGOD: I mean, sometimes I think I hear my !@#$ screaming when I flush the commode. Have you ever had that happen to you?
POTUS: The President of South Korea is furious. I'm furious. The only reason the press isn't having a field day with this is because Libya is in the headlines, right now!
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet they are. Did you tell my friends in the other Company that they should have been a little more careful when they got into bed with Khaddafy's people? There's a reason we wear protection in this business.
POTUS: I've already had words with them.
SPYGOD: Yeah, I bet you told them.
POTUS: Now that's just--
SPYGOD: You know I can hear them laughing right now, right? Something about a dumb-!@#$ moron who doesn't understand how this business works reprimanding them for taking any avenue they could in order to deal with a potential asset, in spite of his numerous shortcomings.
POTUS: Well, yes, the Director did mention that.
SPYGOD: Minus the parts about your being a dumb-!@#$, I'm sure.
POTUS: Well, what do you want me to say?
SPYGOD: The truth would be a nice thing, once in a while. But we know you have a problem with that, don't we, Mr. President?
POTUS: Oh, Jesus !@#$ Christ. That is it. I want your letter of resignation on my desk first thing tomorrow morning, once you sober up and make it back to D.C.
SPYGOD: No.
POTUS: No? What the !@#$ do you mean no?
SPYGOD: I mean no, Mr. President. I am not resigning. You will have to fire me.
POTUS: I thought I just did.
SPYGOD: No, you asked me to resign. That's something entirely different. That makes it sound like it's my idea, and then you can always say you're sorry to see me go. If you have to fire me, that's a whole different busload of prison fish.
POTUS: Not from where I'm standing.
SPYGOD: Then sit down a second, sir. Because then you have to say why. And then you have to explain why this particular excretory outburst from yours truly is any different from any other time I've whipped the glowing alien mansnake out and peed on something sacred. And then you have to explain to everyone, which includes your colleagues, your own intelligence agencies, the worldwide intelligence community, and, most importantly, the American voting public, why this was necessary. And what the blazing living !@#$ are you going to tell them?
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Yeah, that's what I thought. You can't tell them a god!@#$ thing because there is nothing. To. Tell. I get drunk, I get !@#$ up, I shoot guns at people who probably don't deserve it, I expose myself in public, and have probably done even more outrageous and inappropriate things than you and I both know about because my overworked but well-compensated COMPANY spin teams are so good that sometimes they can even reverse the !@#$ flow of time itself. And yet, if you ask most Americans about good old SPYGOD, they give me a glowing 95% approval rating almost every !@#$ time.
POTUS: Because you killed Hitler.
SPYGOD: Because I killed Hitler. Because I kept the commies from nuking us back in the Cold War. Because I fought SQUASH to a standstill, and beyond. Because I helped keep those idiot Jihadis from flying planes into buildings. Because when the Computer Hell Virus hit NYC, I was the one who held it off while Dr. Yesterday and his people found the way to stop it. Because when GORGON takes over a town, or HONEYCOMB pulls another science raid, or the Legion's in fine form yet again, I'm the one who rolls in and deals with their !@#$. Because I just blew up Outland, and stomped ABWEHR, and--
POTUS: After years of letting them slide. After years of sitting on your !@#$ and letting them get away with murder just so you could stop them from doing something worse.
SPYGOD: ... I know. It was the way we used to do things. I never liked it.
POTUS: You never liked it? Well that's good to know, SPYGOD. Now imagine me having to realize that I'd inherited that terrible history the moment I stepped into this position. Imagine me now knowing that I was partially responsible for all those deaths. When I read the report when I got into the Oval Office I had to not cry.
SPYGOD: Well at least you fought crying. Your predecessor just shrugged it the !@#$ off.
POTUS: You never did like him, did you?
SPYGOD: No, but I don't like you, either.
POTUS: Gee, thanks.
SPYGOD: The difference is I would like to like you, Mr. President. You seem like someone who actually thinks about things, once in a while. Your predecessor left that up to his cabinet. We all know how that went.
POTUS: We can't think of everything. That's why we have a cabinet.
SPYGOD: And you can't deal with everything, either. That's why you have people like me.
POTUS: And the other Company.
SPYGOD: Whether we can trust them to clean up after their own !@#$ mess or not.
POTUS: So what are you suggesting, here? I can't just let this slide.
SPYGOD: Mind control.
POTUS: What?
SPYGOD: I was under mind control. We'll blame someone disposable from the Legion. I'll go deal with him or her with extreme prejudice, probably well overdue. And then we can all laugh about it the next time we're at the UN.
POTUS: Are you... are you !@#$ing with me?
SPYGOD: In return, I won't say anything about the real reason you wanted me out of Ice Palace.
POTUS: ...
SPYGOD: Remember, SPYGOD hears all.
POTUS: So where's GORGON?
SPYGOD: ... we're working on it.
POTUS: I certainly hope so.
SPYGOD: Mr. President, back when we started The COMPANY, I promised the President at the time that we would, forever more, do our best to protect America from all threats beyond the scope of normal intelligence to handle. Maybe we haven't always been successful, and maybe some of the things we've done to do it have been questionable. But in the end we've done our best. I don't go for the whole 'history will judge us' bull!@#$ because it doesn't mean anything in the here and now, and that's what ultimately matters at the end of the day. But if I can keep us all alive and safe for another day, I call it a day well spent. Even if it involves me peeing on General Park's grave for an entire hour when I clock out.
POTUS: There's gonna come a time when your best won't be good enough, SPYGOD. You do know that, don't you?
SPYGOD: Maybe more than you realize, sir.
POTUS: Okay, then. Mind control. I'll let you have your spin teams handle the fallout. Try not to make a mess of it, okay?
SPYGOD: I think we'll be alright, sir. This isn't my first round of Blame The Bad Guy, you know.
POTUS: I know. That's what scares me.
SPYGOD: Good afternoon, sir.
(CALL TERMINATED AT SEOUL END)
(SPYGOD is listening to I Am The Best (2NE1) and drinking a suspicious microbrew in Seoul)
Thursday, September 1, 2011
8/30-31/11 - Operation Bad Soju
Let me start this out by saying that I didn't intend to spend the last two days beating the !@#$ out of giant metal wasps on a tiny island in the Yellow Sea, just off Incheon.
The fight took in a lot of the nearby, larger island of Muui, as well as the Incheon international airport. Seeing as how giant metal wasps and passenger planes do not mix very well at all, the Korean authorities are not happy with us, right now.
But I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. Especially when I show them exactly what we've been doing, and why they really don't want to make too much of a fuss about it.
Because they really do not want this !@#$ to go public. Not now. Probably not !@#$ ever.
What are we doing here in the first place? Glad you asked that, son. As you know, we've been working on mining what data we could out of various computer drives we've salvaged from HONEYCOMB installations, so as to facilitate what we've come to call OPERATION BUGSTOMP: the total eradication of the entire science terrorist outfit, the horse it rode in on, and it's nazi eyeball thieving dog Gerte, too.
If you've been paying attention, you know why this is absolutely necessary. But let me show you yet another reason why this must be done.
Let me take you back to South Korea, back in the late 60's and early 70's. This was back in the General Park, days, when a pro-business totalitarian dictator was running things south of the 38th parallel. The KCIA was running a tight ship, and making so many "dissidents" and "communist spies" disappear that it they were making Pinochet's death squads look like amateurs.
Believe me, that's saying something.
In January of 1968, North Korea sent a small detachment of men from Unit 124 into Seoul in an attempt to kill General Park. These were some scary and dedicated bastards, willing to dig up graves and sleep with !@#$ corpses to avoid being seen at night. They had excellent training, adequate equipment, and total commitment.
The only reason they failed was because Park, nasty monster that he was, was !@#$ lucky that day.
Needless to say, General Park wasn't in a mood to let it slide. So he had his military goons in the Air Force put together a revenge mission. They swooped down and gathered up their own "dirty dozen": 31 criminals, outcasts, misfits, and aimless youths who were promised money and rewards if they'd just do their country a little favor.
And after that horrible war, which !@#$ flattened everything between Pyongyang and Pusan, who wouldn't want to be well paid to go North and kill Kim Il-Sung? It must have been how it felt to be in the Dolittle raid after Pearl Harbor, only maybe a little less visceral (unless you lived in Hawaii).
But this was not the Dolittle raid, which is a time-tested textbook case of professionalism, planning, and daring-do. This was a cluster!@#$.
The 31 men who would be turned into Unit 684 were shipped off to Silmido, a tiny island, not far from the shores of Incheon. Over the next two years they were trained past the limits of their endurance and sanity, to the extent that seven of them died just from exhaustion. The instructors didn't give a !@#$, and just pushed the survivors harder.
Their training started in 1968. They were deemed ready to go by 1971. But by that time, Kim and Park had had something of a meeting of the minds. There was talk of reunification, which, as we well know, did not, has not, and will probably never !@#$ happen. But it sounded good after everything that had happened before, and Park, for whatever reason, wasn't of a mind to return the assassination favor, anymore.
So Park did the unthinkable. After spending two !@#$ years training these guys to go do the mother of all wetwork jobs, he canceled the !@#$ mission with extreme prejudice.
(Which means, in civilian terms, he ordered the Unit to be assassinated, themselves, in order to keep the North Koreans from finding out what he'd been planning.)
What happened next, just a little over 40 years ago, is one of the blackest acknowledged chapters in South Korea's history. August 23rd of '71, the remaining members of Unit 684 rebelled, slaughtered their guards, left the compound, and fought their onto the mainland, towards Seoul. What they were going to do, or where they were going to go, is still largely uncertain. But they fought to the death, using every tactic they'd been trained with, and some they'd probably learned before all that.
They were magnificently terrifying, by all accounts. In the end the police just barely stopped the Unit, and most of what was left of them killed themselves with hand grenades. The remaining four were executed after a drumhead trial a year later, and the government sat on the whole !@#$ thing until they were more or less forced to fess up to it, thanks to a movie of all things.
So what does that have to do with anything? Well, son, I'm glad you asked.
While we were decrypting the files we got off those HONEYCOMB servers, we uncovered notes about a PROJECT DANCERS DRESS. Something about taking 31 men and turning them into Supers through a low-impact regimen of training and chemicals. The project wasn't a success, but they didn't go into much detail as to why, or what happened.
And then SPYGOD got to thinking, as SPYGOD is likely to do after a few really strong drinks and a ladyboy or two. Why does 31 sound so familiar? And "Dancers Dress"?
It took me a little scouring, but we eventually figured it out. I'm sure you realize, by now, why 31 is important. But it turns out that the larger, populated island of Muui is right next to Silmido. Muuido means "Dancers Dress Island."
Oh those sneaky HONEYCOMB people. So of course we suit up and zip over there, letting the South Koreans know we're on our way but exactly telling them why. Some bull!@#$ about a rogue strategic talent they really don't want drunk and on the rampage in Seoul, which is good enough for them.
We do some digging on Silmido, and we find a treasure trove of old HONEYCOMB materials, including the aforementioned giant metal wasps. Cue a massive battle that rages across both islands and their precious !@#$ airport for two days, thankfully won by the good guys once the new tech we've been trying out pays off and we trip their kill switch.
So here's the real story about Unit 684, son.
For some weird reason, the Korean peninsula is just not super central. Maybe being the hermit kingdom for so long denied them some essential strands of DNA, and maybe they're just not lucky that way, but you can count the number of known supers in North and South Korea on both hands and have room for a few fingers and a thumb.
So maybe General Park, who got to see some Strategic Talents in action (sort of) during the Korean War wanted some of his own. Maybe having a group of mere men almost cap his sorry butt in 68 brought it home to him that he really needed some special talents guarding him. Maybe he was worried that Kim Il-Sung already had more than he was letting on, and there might be a god hovering outside the Blue House any day now.
Some discrete inquiries are made, and some friends are introduced. Promises are made and plans are cooked up. But tests and trials are required, so raw material is needed.
Hence Unit 684.
Which means that, for two years, while we were fighting them across the planet along with ABWEHR and SQUASH, one of our more rabidly anti-communist allies, and a country in which we actually had a major !@#$ military presence, was clandestinely linked up with HONEYCOMB in a bid to make them their own rabidly loyal, mind-controlled supers.
And then it all went to !@#$.
What happened on that August day, 40 years ago? Did Park finally realize what he'd made a deal with and try to get the !@#$ out of it? Did HONEYCOMB get angry that their plan was botched and decide to punish their former allies? Did the men of Unit 684 just rise up to save their own lives?
We may never know. The answer may be in these drives we've painstakingly excavated. It may remain a mystery forever.
But the scary thing is this: from what little we've been able to determine, PROJECT DANCERS DRESS was just the tip of the iceberg. Ever since 1971, HONEYCOMB has created numerous "Unit 684s" all over the world. They've taken normal people, altered them, and then let them loose amongst the populations.
This means that, much like GORGON, there could be any number of sleeper agents waiting to rise up when they get the signal. They may not even know what they are, or what they can do. And when it happens they may not be in total control of their own actions, which will make what has to happen next very heartbreaking.
But, unlike GORGON, who are fanatical but still mostly baseline, these sleepers will be very hard to deal with.
You see, the men of Unit 684 didn't kill themselves with hand grenades just to make a statement. They used hand grenades because, by that point, that was probably the only thing that would kill them.
Yeah.
General Park is dead, shot by the director of his own KCIA in 1979. So I can't force him to tell me what the !@#$ he was thinking. I can't berate him for having been so !@#$ short-sighted, envious, and dumb.
I can, however, go find his grave and !@#$ on it for a full hour. And after I have another few bottles of this nasty soju I've been drinking since they told me about this new problem we have, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I'll toast the men of Unit 684 when I do it. Magnificent doomed bastards, one and all.
(SPYGOD is listening to Tell Yourself (Clazziquai Project) and drinking some very awful Soju)
The fight took in a lot of the nearby, larger island of Muui, as well as the Incheon international airport. Seeing as how giant metal wasps and passenger planes do not mix very well at all, the Korean authorities are not happy with us, right now.
But I'm pretty sure they'll get over it. Especially when I show them exactly what we've been doing, and why they really don't want to make too much of a fuss about it.
Because they really do not want this !@#$ to go public. Not now. Probably not !@#$ ever.
What are we doing here in the first place? Glad you asked that, son. As you know, we've been working on mining what data we could out of various computer drives we've salvaged from HONEYCOMB installations, so as to facilitate what we've come to call OPERATION BUGSTOMP: the total eradication of the entire science terrorist outfit, the horse it rode in on, and it's nazi eyeball thieving dog Gerte, too.
If you've been paying attention, you know why this is absolutely necessary. But let me show you yet another reason why this must be done.
Let me take you back to South Korea, back in the late 60's and early 70's. This was back in the General Park, days, when a pro-business totalitarian dictator was running things south of the 38th parallel. The KCIA was running a tight ship, and making so many "dissidents" and "communist spies" disappear that it they were making Pinochet's death squads look like amateurs.
Believe me, that's saying something.
In January of 1968, North Korea sent a small detachment of men from Unit 124 into Seoul in an attempt to kill General Park. These were some scary and dedicated bastards, willing to dig up graves and sleep with !@#$ corpses to avoid being seen at night. They had excellent training, adequate equipment, and total commitment.
The only reason they failed was because Park, nasty monster that he was, was !@#$ lucky that day.
Needless to say, General Park wasn't in a mood to let it slide. So he had his military goons in the Air Force put together a revenge mission. They swooped down and gathered up their own "dirty dozen": 31 criminals, outcasts, misfits, and aimless youths who were promised money and rewards if they'd just do their country a little favor.
And after that horrible war, which !@#$ flattened everything between Pyongyang and Pusan, who wouldn't want to be well paid to go North and kill Kim Il-Sung? It must have been how it felt to be in the Dolittle raid after Pearl Harbor, only maybe a little less visceral (unless you lived in Hawaii).
But this was not the Dolittle raid, which is a time-tested textbook case of professionalism, planning, and daring-do. This was a cluster!@#$.
The 31 men who would be turned into Unit 684 were shipped off to Silmido, a tiny island, not far from the shores of Incheon. Over the next two years they were trained past the limits of their endurance and sanity, to the extent that seven of them died just from exhaustion. The instructors didn't give a !@#$, and just pushed the survivors harder.
Their training started in 1968. They were deemed ready to go by 1971. But by that time, Kim and Park had had something of a meeting of the minds. There was talk of reunification, which, as we well know, did not, has not, and will probably never !@#$ happen. But it sounded good after everything that had happened before, and Park, for whatever reason, wasn't of a mind to return the assassination favor, anymore.
So Park did the unthinkable. After spending two !@#$ years training these guys to go do the mother of all wetwork jobs, he canceled the !@#$ mission with extreme prejudice.
(Which means, in civilian terms, he ordered the Unit to be assassinated, themselves, in order to keep the North Koreans from finding out what he'd been planning.)
What happened next, just a little over 40 years ago, is one of the blackest acknowledged chapters in South Korea's history. August 23rd of '71, the remaining members of Unit 684 rebelled, slaughtered their guards, left the compound, and fought their onto the mainland, towards Seoul. What they were going to do, or where they were going to go, is still largely uncertain. But they fought to the death, using every tactic they'd been trained with, and some they'd probably learned before all that.
They were magnificently terrifying, by all accounts. In the end the police just barely stopped the Unit, and most of what was left of them killed themselves with hand grenades. The remaining four were executed after a drumhead trial a year later, and the government sat on the whole !@#$ thing until they were more or less forced to fess up to it, thanks to a movie of all things.
So what does that have to do with anything? Well, son, I'm glad you asked.
While we were decrypting the files we got off those HONEYCOMB servers, we uncovered notes about a PROJECT DANCERS DRESS. Something about taking 31 men and turning them into Supers through a low-impact regimen of training and chemicals. The project wasn't a success, but they didn't go into much detail as to why, or what happened.
And then SPYGOD got to thinking, as SPYGOD is likely to do after a few really strong drinks and a ladyboy or two. Why does 31 sound so familiar? And "Dancers Dress"?
It took me a little scouring, but we eventually figured it out. I'm sure you realize, by now, why 31 is important. But it turns out that the larger, populated island of Muui is right next to Silmido. Muuido means "Dancers Dress Island."
Oh those sneaky HONEYCOMB people. So of course we suit up and zip over there, letting the South Koreans know we're on our way but exactly telling them why. Some bull!@#$ about a rogue strategic talent they really don't want drunk and on the rampage in Seoul, which is good enough for them.
We do some digging on Silmido, and we find a treasure trove of old HONEYCOMB materials, including the aforementioned giant metal wasps. Cue a massive battle that rages across both islands and their precious !@#$ airport for two days, thankfully won by the good guys once the new tech we've been trying out pays off and we trip their kill switch.
So here's the real story about Unit 684, son.
For some weird reason, the Korean peninsula is just not super central. Maybe being the hermit kingdom for so long denied them some essential strands of DNA, and maybe they're just not lucky that way, but you can count the number of known supers in North and South Korea on both hands and have room for a few fingers and a thumb.
So maybe General Park, who got to see some Strategic Talents in action (sort of) during the Korean War wanted some of his own. Maybe having a group of mere men almost cap his sorry butt in 68 brought it home to him that he really needed some special talents guarding him. Maybe he was worried that Kim Il-Sung already had more than he was letting on, and there might be a god hovering outside the Blue House any day now.
Some discrete inquiries are made, and some friends are introduced. Promises are made and plans are cooked up. But tests and trials are required, so raw material is needed.
Hence Unit 684.
Which means that, for two years, while we were fighting them across the planet along with ABWEHR and SQUASH, one of our more rabidly anti-communist allies, and a country in which we actually had a major !@#$ military presence, was clandestinely linked up with HONEYCOMB in a bid to make them their own rabidly loyal, mind-controlled supers.
And then it all went to !@#$.
What happened on that August day, 40 years ago? Did Park finally realize what he'd made a deal with and try to get the !@#$ out of it? Did HONEYCOMB get angry that their plan was botched and decide to punish their former allies? Did the men of Unit 684 just rise up to save their own lives?
We may never know. The answer may be in these drives we've painstakingly excavated. It may remain a mystery forever.
But the scary thing is this: from what little we've been able to determine, PROJECT DANCERS DRESS was just the tip of the iceberg. Ever since 1971, HONEYCOMB has created numerous "Unit 684s" all over the world. They've taken normal people, altered them, and then let them loose amongst the populations.
This means that, much like GORGON, there could be any number of sleeper agents waiting to rise up when they get the signal. They may not even know what they are, or what they can do. And when it happens they may not be in total control of their own actions, which will make what has to happen next very heartbreaking.
But, unlike GORGON, who are fanatical but still mostly baseline, these sleepers will be very hard to deal with.
You see, the men of Unit 684 didn't kill themselves with hand grenades just to make a statement. They used hand grenades because, by that point, that was probably the only thing that would kill them.
Yeah.
General Park is dead, shot by the director of his own KCIA in 1979. So I can't force him to tell me what the !@#$ he was thinking. I can't berate him for having been so !@#$ short-sighted, envious, and dumb.
I can, however, go find his grave and !@#$ on it for a full hour. And after I have another few bottles of this nasty soju I've been drinking since they told me about this new problem we have, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
And I'll toast the men of Unit 684 when I do it. Magnificent doomed bastards, one and all.
(SPYGOD is listening to Tell Yourself (Clazziquai Project) and drinking some very awful Soju)
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
8/29/11 - All Alone Flesh and Bone
Every once in a while, when I'm feeling social, or really just need to get the !@#$ out of The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G, I'll actually go out for a drink. And since I don't tend to want to drink in a crowd, mostly because whenever I do people either want to !@#$ me or !@#$ with me, I pick bars where you won't be disturbed because everyone there wants to be left alone.
One such establishment is the Black Rat of Armagh, which is one of the darkest, nastiest Irish bars you will ever see in your life. They say the founder was arrested in 1952 after being caught doing something truly horrible with one of the waitresses and a pool cue, and every member of the coroner's inquest was sick for weeks after viewing the evidence.
The atmosphere hasn't improved since. The floor hasn't been mopped in years, the lights are all burned out, the booths may be boobytrapped, and the bartender will smash bottles against his forehead for tips. You don't want anything out of the tap if you value your GI tract, and you'd rather !@#$ in the alley outside than dare to go in the men's.
Every time the Black Rat gets picked up and put down when the city converts, the neighborhood it lands in gets just a little more unpleasant to have it there. It's like it's the bad kid in the back of the classroom, dragging the other students down with him.
So that's where I go for a drink. They keep bottles of Singha there just for me because they know I can't !@#$ stand Guinness. And they know on the night I'm there no one will go home in a bag, because I'll !@#$ SPYGOD VISION anyone who tries anything into permanent incontinence.
Which means it's less fun for the regulars, but that's their tough !@#$. If I don't keep the place at least a little clean there's less chance that he might show up.
You see, sometimes I have an ulterior motive for going out for a drink. Sometimes I go out hoping that I'll run into Aaron, again. And the Black Rat is one of the few places he'll go when he's in Neo York City, for pretty much the same reasons I go there.
Because he's also had more than his share of being !@#$ed with, and just wants to be left alone.
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be immortal. They read the fact sheet, however bogus and redacted all to !@#$ most of those 'facts' are, and want to know what it feels like. It must be heaven, right?
And I'll them them no, son. It most certainly is not.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I like having it as a tool in the arsenal. I like the fact that I can wander into a firefight buck naked except for a hat and a gun and walk back out the other side with only a few scratches.
(That's not to say I'm indestructible. Far from it. I have my weaknesses, and canny readers of this blog may have already guessed what a few of them are. Hint: not alcohol.)
But as for the actual reality of living forever, it sucks. It's not what you're promised in the movies or comic books or daydreams that don't involve naked people doing everything you want. Or maybe do, depending.
It's highly and horribly overrated.
And I know what you're thinking, son. You're thinking 'Gee, SPYGOD, you've only had that eye for, what, maybe fifty years? How on earth would you know that immortality is a crock when you've only had half an extra human lifetime to ponder it?'
That would be an excellent question. The answer is because I got some inside intel on the matter from someone who actually knows.
And Aaron hates it. He really !@#$ hates it.
Buy him a drink and he'll be happy to tell you all about it, provided he doesn't just look at you with that look (the one that once made Dick Cheney !@#$ his pants back in 1984) and then get up and leave. Like I said, he'd rather just be left alone.
Aaron says that immortality is about permanence in an impermanent world. It's about getting to know and love people, only to watch them grow old and die in front of you while you stay exactly how you are. It's about watching people learn from their mistakes and change while you're just standing still and going nowhere but in a little circle.
And the notion that meeting new people and making new relationships somehow salves this pain? It's bull!@#$. It turns out that people have this tendency to be repeated by the world, over and over again. Before long every new face you see has little pieces of a dozen other faces inside of them, and you always remember all those people when you're making new friends.
But then they aren't just like those people, before, and that makes you upset and sad, and more than a little nostalgic for those times long past.
He told me these things back in the 80's, when he was in the White House, guarding Rappin Ronnie. I didn't believe him then. But as the decade went on, I started losing more friends from the War. And when I went to go see the ones I still had, and saw they'd become doddering old men and women, frail and broken and waiting for an end to come around at last.
And there I was, untouched, like a picture on the wall come to life and trying to sneak hooch into the VA rest home.
The next time I saw him, out drinking in a place just like this, I told him he was right. And he looked at me, drunk as !@#$, and just laughed in that evil, window-shattering laugh of his.
I hope he's at the Black Rat tonight. I have some questions I need to ask him. I know he probably won't answer, but I can usually learn more from what he doesn't say about something than what he actually does. He's funny like that.
And I don't feel like joking around with this !@#$ right now.
(SPYGOD is listening to Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode, by way of Marilyn Manson) and is about to pollute his stomach with something truly terrifying.)
One such establishment is the Black Rat of Armagh, which is one of the darkest, nastiest Irish bars you will ever see in your life. They say the founder was arrested in 1952 after being caught doing something truly horrible with one of the waitresses and a pool cue, and every member of the coroner's inquest was sick for weeks after viewing the evidence.
The atmosphere hasn't improved since. The floor hasn't been mopped in years, the lights are all burned out, the booths may be boobytrapped, and the bartender will smash bottles against his forehead for tips. You don't want anything out of the tap if you value your GI tract, and you'd rather !@#$ in the alley outside than dare to go in the men's.
Every time the Black Rat gets picked up and put down when the city converts, the neighborhood it lands in gets just a little more unpleasant to have it there. It's like it's the bad kid in the back of the classroom, dragging the other students down with him.
So that's where I go for a drink. They keep bottles of Singha there just for me because they know I can't !@#$ stand Guinness. And they know on the night I'm there no one will go home in a bag, because I'll !@#$ SPYGOD VISION anyone who tries anything into permanent incontinence.
Which means it's less fun for the regulars, but that's their tough !@#$. If I don't keep the place at least a little clean there's less chance that he might show up.
You see, sometimes I have an ulterior motive for going out for a drink. Sometimes I go out hoping that I'll run into Aaron, again. And the Black Rat is one of the few places he'll go when he's in Neo York City, for pretty much the same reasons I go there.
Because he's also had more than his share of being !@#$ed with, and just wants to be left alone.
Sometimes people ask me what it's like to be immortal. They read the fact sheet, however bogus and redacted all to !@#$ most of those 'facts' are, and want to know what it feels like. It must be heaven, right?
And I'll them them no, son. It most certainly is not.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I like having it as a tool in the arsenal. I like the fact that I can wander into a firefight buck naked except for a hat and a gun and walk back out the other side with only a few scratches.
(That's not to say I'm indestructible. Far from it. I have my weaknesses, and canny readers of this blog may have already guessed what a few of them are. Hint: not alcohol.)
But as for the actual reality of living forever, it sucks. It's not what you're promised in the movies or comic books or daydreams that don't involve naked people doing everything you want. Or maybe do, depending.
It's highly and horribly overrated.
And I know what you're thinking, son. You're thinking 'Gee, SPYGOD, you've only had that eye for, what, maybe fifty years? How on earth would you know that immortality is a crock when you've only had half an extra human lifetime to ponder it?'
That would be an excellent question. The answer is because I got some inside intel on the matter from someone who actually knows.
And Aaron hates it. He really !@#$ hates it.
Buy him a drink and he'll be happy to tell you all about it, provided he doesn't just look at you with that look (the one that once made Dick Cheney !@#$ his pants back in 1984) and then get up and leave. Like I said, he'd rather just be left alone.
Aaron says that immortality is about permanence in an impermanent world. It's about getting to know and love people, only to watch them grow old and die in front of you while you stay exactly how you are. It's about watching people learn from their mistakes and change while you're just standing still and going nowhere but in a little circle.
And the notion that meeting new people and making new relationships somehow salves this pain? It's bull!@#$. It turns out that people have this tendency to be repeated by the world, over and over again. Before long every new face you see has little pieces of a dozen other faces inside of them, and you always remember all those people when you're making new friends.
But then they aren't just like those people, before, and that makes you upset and sad, and more than a little nostalgic for those times long past.
He told me these things back in the 80's, when he was in the White House, guarding Rappin Ronnie. I didn't believe him then. But as the decade went on, I started losing more friends from the War. And when I went to go see the ones I still had, and saw they'd become doddering old men and women, frail and broken and waiting for an end to come around at last.
And there I was, untouched, like a picture on the wall come to life and trying to sneak hooch into the VA rest home.
The next time I saw him, out drinking in a place just like this, I told him he was right. And he looked at me, drunk as !@#$, and just laughed in that evil, window-shattering laugh of his.
I hope he's at the Black Rat tonight. I have some questions I need to ask him. I know he probably won't answer, but I can usually learn more from what he doesn't say about something than what he actually does. He's funny like that.
And I don't feel like joking around with this !@#$ right now.
(SPYGOD is listening to Personal Jesus (Depeche Mode, by way of Marilyn Manson) and is about to pollute his stomach with something truly terrifying.)
Sunday, August 28, 2011
8/28/11 - Tea with the Cannibal Dynamo
INCIDENT REPORT
8/28/11
11:57 AM
Transcript begins:
Oh !@#$ me, can't we get any decent booze in this !@#$ place? I refuse to touch that brown heroin, son. It's worse than !@#$ coke. At least you can get help to quit coke. Coffee? They just laugh at you.
Well, okay, maybe some tea. It's not as bad for you. But I want it black, you hear? None of this cream and sugar !@#$.
That's it. Black as death's big shiny !@#$. Only people who take cream in their tea are steers and queers, and I ain't no bull.
Yes, that was a joke. You can laugh. I won't shoot you.
Okay, incident report. We're live on this, right? Oh, we've been live the whole time? Well !@#$. Okay. Let me adjust my !@#$ tie, here. Oh, wait, don't have one. Never mind.
Yeah, it's not every day I walk back to storm emergency central wearing nothing but waders, a gun, and a smile, huh? Been one !@#$ of a !@#$ed-up morning, son.
So, the report.
It was about 9 in the AM, and I was waltzing through Coney Island, making sure anyone who needed saving got it.The wind and the rain are up, the streets are flooded with water and strewn with trash, and if I were normal I wouldn't be able to see more than five or ten feet in front of my face.
Of course, I'm not normal, so I'm just the right person for this job. I mean, if you're going to look for people who got left behind...
I ran into a few people disobeying the evacuation orders, and I made sure they had no !@#$ kids with them. Anyone with kids got SPYGOD VISIONed to the nearest shelter. Anyone without, I gave them the speech and kept on walking.
Hey, it's like I told you when I took this job, I don't give a !@#$ about civilians and mandatory evacs. You want to stand there in the face of a Hurricane and pretend you're Leonardo DiCaprio and this is the !@#$ Titanic? Have at it. Just don't drag your kids into it, for !@#$ sake.
Anyway. I'm on Sea Breeze, heading for West 5th, and I see one guy I know doing just that. It's one of those Free people. You know, the ones who stay behind and have a party in the park when the city converts?
Well, he's just standing there, arms open in the wind like he's waiting for Kate !@#$ Winslet. I ask him if he's okay and he says yeah, he just wants to make sure the Temple's okay. Guess he used to go there or something.
I don't even give him the speech. I figure he knows what he's doing, so I tell him to get scarce when the water hits his knees. He says he can't promise anything, but that's good enough for me. So I go on my way.
And I swear I don't get twenty feet into the mist and the wet before I hear him scream.
I turn around and all I can see, where he was, is a big dark shape. For a moment I wonder if my vision's failing me, but then the shape stands up, holding that poor guy up along with him, and I see what it is.
Best description? A big brass minotaur, maybe ten feet tall, with metal-strip muscles and black gears inside and out. His eyes are black as, well, black as this tea, at least until his rib cage hinges open on both sides and he stuffs this poor guy inside of it.
The guy wasn't even dead when he put him in there, but suddenly there's this whoomp like a gas stove lighting up, and the shape's on fire on the inside. I can hear the poor guy screaming, and the thing's eyes light up, and fire boils out of its eyes and mouth and ribcage, and that poor guy isn't dead yet.
Jesus !@#$. I ain't forgetting that in a long time. You know how a man screams when he's burning to death? Now imagine him burning and not !@#$ dying.
So what's a guy with a trench gun to do? I start stalking over there, thinking this mother!@#$ gonna get my metal. It sees me coming and starts laughing balls of fire.
And it says "I have been looking for you, little man. Come feel the fire of Moloch."
And I say "!@#$ you you !@#$ !@#$ piece of vagrant eating !@#$ !@#$ !@#$," and let him have it with some SPYGOD VISION.
Which, of course, does not !@#$ work on giant metal supervillains with flames for insides.
Nasty thing decides to !@#$ fire out of its mouth, right at me. So I'm dodging and weaving, trying to get close enough to get a good shot in with the trench gun without getting barbecued. And it's tossing fireballs out of its mouth and throwing them from his hands like something from Super Mario Brothers on Martian Speed, blowing up half the !@#$ neighborhood in the process and laughing fire.
And yes, he gets a good bead on the !@#$ Temple. !@#$ jerk.
At a time like this, a man wonders why he didn't bring a more complete armory with him. But at a time like this, wondering such things is highly !@#$ counterproductive, and likely to get you killed. So you have to take in some facts and improvise.
Fact one, he's fire, but with all the water and steam he's probably not seeing too well, which is the only reason I'm not a big shish-SPYGOD yet.
(Yes, it's shish, not kebab. Shish-kebab is lamb. Shish-taouk is chicken. Shish-SPYGOD is me.)
Fact two, this is the third time in recent times someone's targeted me specifically using fire. It's like they know something maybe they shouldn't.
Fact three, there's trash all over the place, some of which may be useful.
So I duck behind a wall, grab a floating mannequin, and do a quick costume switcheroo while trying to get him to engage in some expositional, pre-kill dialogue that used to be all the rage with supervillains back in the day. Unfortunately, he really wasn't interested in telling me who sent him, or why, or how much he's being paid. But, fortunately, he was really !@#$ slow to get over, and since he was in range of my trenchgun, he was a little more cautious now.
(Fact four.)
He did say one thing, though, which both amazed me and got me the perfect moment to prop that mannequin up. Then he blew the !@#$ out of it before he realized it wasn't me. And then I stood up and returned the favor.
Silly me, I aimed for his mouth, and it didn't do a whole !@#$ of a lot. Lucky me, I hit his chest instead, and the poor fellow inside of him took the brunt of the damage. He died, right then and there, and promptly stopped burning.
Which meant that Moloch lost his mojo.
Now, maybe he didn't have a backup plan, maybe he's just another coward who's useless without his gimmick, and maybe didn't like the looks of my alien love penis, but he really looked !@#$ surprised and scared without all that fire. He took two steps back, pointed the finger of I'll Be Back, and pressed something on his chest that made him go all Star Trek.
And that leaves me standing there in the rain, buck naked except for the waders and a gun. Someone staggered by and gave me the WTF look, and I said "I said mandatory evacuation!" And that got everyone heading out and off to their nearest shelter, including a few kids I'd missed.
So yeah, that's my report. One decent dead guy who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, one supervillian assassin with one !@#$ of a nasty gimmick, and one more for the power of improvisation in the face of impending doom.
Gotta love this town, huh?
Hey, got any more of this tea? This !@#$ is actually pretty !@#$ good.
Transcript Ends:
(SPYGOD is listening to Lunchbox (Marilyn Manson) and drinking all the black tea he can get his cold hands on)
8/28/11
11:57 AM
Transcript begins:
Oh !@#$ me, can't we get any decent booze in this !@#$ place? I refuse to touch that brown heroin, son. It's worse than !@#$ coke. At least you can get help to quit coke. Coffee? They just laugh at you.
Well, okay, maybe some tea. It's not as bad for you. But I want it black, you hear? None of this cream and sugar !@#$.
That's it. Black as death's big shiny !@#$. Only people who take cream in their tea are steers and queers, and I ain't no bull.
Yes, that was a joke. You can laugh. I won't shoot you.
Okay, incident report. We're live on this, right? Oh, we've been live the whole time? Well !@#$. Okay. Let me adjust my !@#$ tie, here. Oh, wait, don't have one. Never mind.
Yeah, it's not every day I walk back to storm emergency central wearing nothing but waders, a gun, and a smile, huh? Been one !@#$ of a !@#$ed-up morning, son.
So, the report.
It was about 9 in the AM, and I was waltzing through Coney Island, making sure anyone who needed saving got it.The wind and the rain are up, the streets are flooded with water and strewn with trash, and if I were normal I wouldn't be able to see more than five or ten feet in front of my face.
Of course, I'm not normal, so I'm just the right person for this job. I mean, if you're going to look for people who got left behind...
I ran into a few people disobeying the evacuation orders, and I made sure they had no !@#$ kids with them. Anyone with kids got SPYGOD VISIONed to the nearest shelter. Anyone without, I gave them the speech and kept on walking.
Hey, it's like I told you when I took this job, I don't give a !@#$ about civilians and mandatory evacs. You want to stand there in the face of a Hurricane and pretend you're Leonardo DiCaprio and this is the !@#$ Titanic? Have at it. Just don't drag your kids into it, for !@#$ sake.
Anyway. I'm on Sea Breeze, heading for West 5th, and I see one guy I know doing just that. It's one of those Free people. You know, the ones who stay behind and have a party in the park when the city converts?
Well, he's just standing there, arms open in the wind like he's waiting for Kate !@#$ Winslet. I ask him if he's okay and he says yeah, he just wants to make sure the Temple's okay. Guess he used to go there or something.
I don't even give him the speech. I figure he knows what he's doing, so I tell him to get scarce when the water hits his knees. He says he can't promise anything, but that's good enough for me. So I go on my way.
And I swear I don't get twenty feet into the mist and the wet before I hear him scream.
I turn around and all I can see, where he was, is a big dark shape. For a moment I wonder if my vision's failing me, but then the shape stands up, holding that poor guy up along with him, and I see what it is.
Best description? A big brass minotaur, maybe ten feet tall, with metal-strip muscles and black gears inside and out. His eyes are black as, well, black as this tea, at least until his rib cage hinges open on both sides and he stuffs this poor guy inside of it.
The guy wasn't even dead when he put him in there, but suddenly there's this whoomp like a gas stove lighting up, and the shape's on fire on the inside. I can hear the poor guy screaming, and the thing's eyes light up, and fire boils out of its eyes and mouth and ribcage, and that poor guy isn't dead yet.
Jesus !@#$. I ain't forgetting that in a long time. You know how a man screams when he's burning to death? Now imagine him burning and not !@#$ dying.
So what's a guy with a trench gun to do? I start stalking over there, thinking this mother!@#$ gonna get my metal. It sees me coming and starts laughing balls of fire.
And it says "I have been looking for you, little man. Come feel the fire of Moloch."
And I say "!@#$ you you !@#$ !@#$ piece of vagrant eating !@#$ !@#$ !@#$," and let him have it with some SPYGOD VISION.
Which, of course, does not !@#$ work on giant metal supervillains with flames for insides.
Nasty thing decides to !@#$ fire out of its mouth, right at me. So I'm dodging and weaving, trying to get close enough to get a good shot in with the trench gun without getting barbecued. And it's tossing fireballs out of its mouth and throwing them from his hands like something from Super Mario Brothers on Martian Speed, blowing up half the !@#$ neighborhood in the process and laughing fire.
And yes, he gets a good bead on the !@#$ Temple. !@#$ jerk.
At a time like this, a man wonders why he didn't bring a more complete armory with him. But at a time like this, wondering such things is highly !@#$ counterproductive, and likely to get you killed. So you have to take in some facts and improvise.
Fact one, he's fire, but with all the water and steam he's probably not seeing too well, which is the only reason I'm not a big shish-SPYGOD yet.
(Yes, it's shish, not kebab. Shish-kebab is lamb. Shish-taouk is chicken. Shish-SPYGOD is me.)
Fact two, this is the third time in recent times someone's targeted me specifically using fire. It's like they know something maybe they shouldn't.
Fact three, there's trash all over the place, some of which may be useful.
So I duck behind a wall, grab a floating mannequin, and do a quick costume switcheroo while trying to get him to engage in some expositional, pre-kill dialogue that used to be all the rage with supervillains back in the day. Unfortunately, he really wasn't interested in telling me who sent him, or why, or how much he's being paid. But, fortunately, he was really !@#$ slow to get over, and since he was in range of my trenchgun, he was a little more cautious now.
(Fact four.)
He did say one thing, though, which both amazed me and got me the perfect moment to prop that mannequin up. Then he blew the !@#$ out of it before he realized it wasn't me. And then I stood up and returned the favor.
Silly me, I aimed for his mouth, and it didn't do a whole !@#$ of a lot. Lucky me, I hit his chest instead, and the poor fellow inside of him took the brunt of the damage. He died, right then and there, and promptly stopped burning.
Which meant that Moloch lost his mojo.
Now, maybe he didn't have a backup plan, maybe he's just another coward who's useless without his gimmick, and maybe didn't like the looks of my alien love penis, but he really looked !@#$ surprised and scared without all that fire. He took two steps back, pointed the finger of I'll Be Back, and pressed something on his chest that made him go all Star Trek.
And that leaves me standing there in the rain, buck naked except for the waders and a gun. Someone staggered by and gave me the WTF look, and I said "I said mandatory evacuation!" And that got everyone heading out and off to their nearest shelter, including a few kids I'd missed.
So yeah, that's my report. One decent dead guy who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, one supervillian assassin with one !@#$ of a nasty gimmick, and one more for the power of improvisation in the face of impending doom.
Gotta love this town, huh?
Hey, got any more of this tea? This !@#$ is actually pretty !@#$ good.
Transcript Ends:
(SPYGOD is listening to Lunchbox (Marilyn Manson) and drinking all the black tea he can get his cold hands on)
Saturday, August 27, 2011
8/26-27/11 - Come on Irene
Nothing like a !@#$ hurricane to un!@#$ your head.
That and our ongoing investigations as to the whereabouts of GORGON, which bore some strange and disturbing fruit last night, thanks to Thurl. But I'll get to that !@#$ soon enough! We have a slightly more pressing problem right now.
The problem, in case you've been locked up in your master's basement for the last few days, is that mother nature, grand !@#$ queen that she is, has decided to visit some fun on our Eastern shores. Her name is Irene, she measures in at a few hundred miles across, and her category 1 !@#$ just slammed into North Carolina this morning.
And guess where she's heading? Right up the coast to us, taking in New Jersey along the way. Which may or may not be a terrible thing, depending on your opinion of the !@#$ Garden State. Me, I always associate it with second rate mobsters, drunken casino bums, and playgrounds full of toxic waste, so I suppose a 75 mph cleanup wouldn't hurt too badly.
Except of course for the fact that, when idiots decide to hole up and brave the elements, they invariably have their children with them. And they're not any !@#$ better at surviving idiot-killing storms than their !@#$ parents are. So I have to temper my normal lack of sympathy for denizens of the Trash Can State with the fact that there's kids involved.
Fortunately for them, a number of our strategic talents are at work as I speak, shoring up beaches and streets, battening down hatches, zipping up and down the coastline and trying to rescue idiots ahead of the storm. I hear there's a running, one-sided gun battle with some fools out the Outer Islands who are insisting they're going to wait it out, but that should end right the !@#$ quick as soon as we have Tank walk in and explain where they're spending the night, tonight.
(He has to stick a 30-ought up his !@#$ and pull the trigger in order to get off. No joke.)
But that leaves Neo York City, smack in the !@#$'s path.
The good news is that they must still have hurricanes 500 years in the future. The city's defensive grid handles high winds the same way it handles bombardments, space lasers, and hijacked passenger planes, which to say pretty !@#$ well. Once the storm gets to the point that it starts doing damage, the grid essentially forms a bubble around the entire city, and we have the privilege of watching the wind and rain roll right past us, like we were watching it on TV.
The bad news is that, much like giant metal insects coming up from under the harbor, the defensive grid isn't worth !@#$ against flooding. Which means that we're still in danger of major water damage, especially in the low-lying areas. We have some pump systems in place, of course, but we're still looking at the water level rising and spilling into the streets, which means washed out basements, disrupted services, stranded folks, possible drownings, exposure, the whole !@#$ seafood dog.
Which is why hizzoner is telling people to get the !@#$ to the shelters, right the !@#$ now.
Now, you'd think we could fine-tune the defensive grid. There is something that looks a lot like a control room, right in the middle of the city. It's a big sphere that's made of the same metal that's coated the other buildings and streets. No matter what happens during the conversion, it always stays just where it is, right at the center of the storm of streets and buildings, which would indicate it's got some kind of sway in things, right?
But all that's in there is a big chair and a lot of screens. The screens flip through the streets in a swift, endless loop that's too fast to really watch, and don't connect up with any cameras we've ever seen, which is kind of spooky. And sitting in the chair does abso!@#$inglutely nothing but give you a good view of the screens.
Dr. Yesterday tried working on the chair and the screens, back in the day, which means to say he put his wife on the job. She got absolutely nowhere. And that's saying something.
But all that really means is that the city isn't going to completely save our bacon. That means it's up to us to handle this, like any other city would. However, no other city has yours truly as a proud, civic-minded citizen.
So, once again, I have been named first assistant storm warden. This essentially means I get to prowl around the streets in the areas most likely to be affected with my trusty megaphone and scream abuse at people who are not getting a !@#$ move on. Tragically, I am not allowed to shoot anyone for not complying, as apparently not evacuating a dangerous area in time of civic emergency isn't a shooting offense.
Looting, on the other hand, is. So you better !@#$ behave, certain people who I just know are going to take advantage of a bad situation. SPYGOD sees all.
Well, okay, not as much as I'd like. There's still that issue with GORGON and where they decamped to after they ran from West Papua. But thanks to yet another waterlogged favor to the Kingdom of Atlantis, we have something approaching an answer.
It seems that one of GORGON's subs went down on the way. Crashed and imploded well north-west of their starting destination, right around the middle of the East Mariana Basin. It was barely recognizable by the time his people found it, but I guess some things remain as they are, even 6000 meters down on the ocean floor.
Which means, unless it was really !@#$ lost, we have a general heading. And that makes finding them a little easier than before. Not a lot, to be truthful, but at least now we have something of a starting point, rather than "anywhere but where they left from."
(Unless it's a ruse, or they doubled back)
Anyway, that's for another day. For now, I've got my Versace waders on, a trench gun across my back, and I'm out telling people to get back in, or get to the shelters. No one's questioned why I'm wearing a rubber dress so far, and with any luck they'll remember what happened the last time some drunk !@#$ tried.
Come on, Irene. We're !@#$ ready for you.
(SPYGOD is listening to Here Comes the Rain Again (Eurythmics) and staying sober until this is over. Maybe)
That and our ongoing investigations as to the whereabouts of GORGON, which bore some strange and disturbing fruit last night, thanks to Thurl. But I'll get to that !@#$ soon enough! We have a slightly more pressing problem right now.
The problem, in case you've been locked up in your master's basement for the last few days, is that mother nature, grand !@#$ queen that she is, has decided to visit some fun on our Eastern shores. Her name is Irene, she measures in at a few hundred miles across, and her category 1 !@#$ just slammed into North Carolina this morning.
And guess where she's heading? Right up the coast to us, taking in New Jersey along the way. Which may or may not be a terrible thing, depending on your opinion of the !@#$ Garden State. Me, I always associate it with second rate mobsters, drunken casino bums, and playgrounds full of toxic waste, so I suppose a 75 mph cleanup wouldn't hurt too badly.
Except of course for the fact that, when idiots decide to hole up and brave the elements, they invariably have their children with them. And they're not any !@#$ better at surviving idiot-killing storms than their !@#$ parents are. So I have to temper my normal lack of sympathy for denizens of the Trash Can State with the fact that there's kids involved.
Fortunately for them, a number of our strategic talents are at work as I speak, shoring up beaches and streets, battening down hatches, zipping up and down the coastline and trying to rescue idiots ahead of the storm. I hear there's a running, one-sided gun battle with some fools out the Outer Islands who are insisting they're going to wait it out, but that should end right the !@#$ quick as soon as we have Tank walk in and explain where they're spending the night, tonight.
(He has to stick a 30-ought up his !@#$ and pull the trigger in order to get off. No joke.)
But that leaves Neo York City, smack in the !@#$'s path.
The good news is that they must still have hurricanes 500 years in the future. The city's defensive grid handles high winds the same way it handles bombardments, space lasers, and hijacked passenger planes, which to say pretty !@#$ well. Once the storm gets to the point that it starts doing damage, the grid essentially forms a bubble around the entire city, and we have the privilege of watching the wind and rain roll right past us, like we were watching it on TV.
The bad news is that, much like giant metal insects coming up from under the harbor, the defensive grid isn't worth !@#$ against flooding. Which means that we're still in danger of major water damage, especially in the low-lying areas. We have some pump systems in place, of course, but we're still looking at the water level rising and spilling into the streets, which means washed out basements, disrupted services, stranded folks, possible drownings, exposure, the whole !@#$ seafood dog.
Which is why hizzoner is telling people to get the !@#$ to the shelters, right the !@#$ now.
Now, you'd think we could fine-tune the defensive grid. There is something that looks a lot like a control room, right in the middle of the city. It's a big sphere that's made of the same metal that's coated the other buildings and streets. No matter what happens during the conversion, it always stays just where it is, right at the center of the storm of streets and buildings, which would indicate it's got some kind of sway in things, right?
But all that's in there is a big chair and a lot of screens. The screens flip through the streets in a swift, endless loop that's too fast to really watch, and don't connect up with any cameras we've ever seen, which is kind of spooky. And sitting in the chair does abso!@#$inglutely nothing but give you a good view of the screens.
Dr. Yesterday tried working on the chair and the screens, back in the day, which means to say he put his wife on the job. She got absolutely nowhere. And that's saying something.
But all that really means is that the city isn't going to completely save our bacon. That means it's up to us to handle this, like any other city would. However, no other city has yours truly as a proud, civic-minded citizen.
So, once again, I have been named first assistant storm warden. This essentially means I get to prowl around the streets in the areas most likely to be affected with my trusty megaphone and scream abuse at people who are not getting a !@#$ move on. Tragically, I am not allowed to shoot anyone for not complying, as apparently not evacuating a dangerous area in time of civic emergency isn't a shooting offense.
Looting, on the other hand, is. So you better !@#$ behave, certain people who I just know are going to take advantage of a bad situation. SPYGOD sees all.
Well, okay, not as much as I'd like. There's still that issue with GORGON and where they decamped to after they ran from West Papua. But thanks to yet another waterlogged favor to the Kingdom of Atlantis, we have something approaching an answer.
It seems that one of GORGON's subs went down on the way. Crashed and imploded well north-west of their starting destination, right around the middle of the East Mariana Basin. It was barely recognizable by the time his people found it, but I guess some things remain as they are, even 6000 meters down on the ocean floor.
Which means, unless it was really !@#$ lost, we have a general heading. And that makes finding them a little easier than before. Not a lot, to be truthful, but at least now we have something of a starting point, rather than "anywhere but where they left from."
(Unless it's a ruse, or they doubled back)
Anyway, that's for another day. For now, I've got my Versace waders on, a trench gun across my back, and I'm out telling people to get back in, or get to the shelters. No one's questioned why I'm wearing a rubber dress so far, and with any luck they'll remember what happened the last time some drunk !@#$ tried.
Come on, Irene. We're !@#$ ready for you.
(SPYGOD is listening to Here Comes the Rain Again (Eurythmics) and staying sober until this is over. Maybe)
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