9/19/12 - A Monument to the Ruined Age - Pt. 2

And we're back, but really no !@#$ better.

I wound up taking a walk around the city, thinking that being around ordinary people would clear my !@#$ing head. But that was a big !@#$ mistake. Everyplace I went I saw signs of what the Imago have !@#$ing done to China, and the world.

And that just made me !@#$ing angrier.

I wanted to tear down all those !@#$ing posters on the walls, all gently demanding obedience and sacrifice. I wanted to kick in and !@#$ on all the video screens everywhere, playing endless propaganda loops and watching for "crimes against the people." I wanted to scream the truth at the top of my !@#$ lungs, especially now that I know a !@#$ of a lot more about that truth than I did before, or ever !@#$ing wanted to.

And then, just when I didn't think I could get any !@#$ angrier (at least not without !@#$ing exploding like a Halloween pumpkin) I actually saw one of the !@#$ers.

He was Silver and Blue, floating twenty !@#$ing feet above a busy intersection, slowly rotating like something on top of a department store Christmas display. The people who passed by him all nodded and half-bowed and moved past, like they'd run into a high party member or something. And he was looking down at the people, and smiling like an arrogant politician on a palm-presser, all smug and secure and knowing that he !@#$ing owned the !@#$ floor. 

That wasn't the worst bit, though.

The worst thing was that the corners of the intersection were piled high with !@#$ing offerings to the bastard. Fruit and flowers were heaped up in rotting piles no one dared to clean up or remove, and makeshift shrines had been made by them, with incense sticks lit from oil lamps.

And people were actually !@#$ing praying to the thing, like he was the shrine in a temple.

I stood there, wondering how high and hard I'd have to jump to grab his head and twist it the !@#$ off, and then someone half-punched me in the !@#$ing ribs and told me to bow and show respect. So I did, and kept moving, hoping the Silver and Blue thing didn't notice me, and just kept keeping the !@#$ on.

This is the answer, son. When you ask me how I can go on with this war, knowing that they could teleport into !@#$ing Southern Thailand and exterminate the whole !@#$ing population because they thought someone who'd hurt them had come from there, it's things like this.

The fact that humanity has meekly !@#$ing accepted these metal-plated monsters as their saviors, not knowing what they're actually capable of.

(Well, that and we're about to get !@#$ed by some weird-!@#$, big lethal Doom from beyond the stars, but that's another story for another time.)

So we're back to continue the big !@#$ true story of GORGON, son. But this time we are !@#$ing playing it smart. I am not even touching that baijiu !@#$, this time. Instead, I have elected to drink all the local beer I can, which means I made the grocers just outside this adorable guest house really !@#$ glad for the night.

And, two cases into my stash of Beijing Gold, I am finding that my brainmeat is less !@#$ed up, and I am better able to process and express the true horror that my highly-flammable fishing expedition uncovered. 

So, Dark Star, who's outed herself as a !@#$ing alien to General Shiro "Partyman" Iishi, is hanging around Unit 731 to see what makes us !@#$ pathetic humans tick, tock, and stop moving. This is all being done to supposedly help her help the Japanese make submarines capable to getting down to where her crashed spaceship is, so she show her gratitude to them (for rescuing her from a freaky gangster-run whorehouse) by loading them up with insane levels of technology.

That's what she !@#$ing says, anyway. But after hanging out with this girl with black, empty eyes for a while, and watching her suck the memories out of captives, and picking up on little things she says, and the things she doesn't say, Shiro gets the idea that she isn't being 100% honest with him. Of course, his job is to !@#$ing obey, so he doesn't make too big of a stink about it, but he confides his worries in his companion in trolling whorehouses (that happens to be her !@#$ing handler) and his buddy agrees to look into things for him. Somehow.

1941 comes and goes, and you know what !@#$ing happens then, son. The day that lives in infamy, and the end of our being able to sit on our !@#$ hands and support freedom in Europe with our money but not our blood. Things at Unit 731 reach a renewed pitch, now that they went and !@#$ed with the wrong hornet's nest, and the Imperial Army wants Shiro to give them more results, and faster.

Especially when it comes to that !@#$ submarine man thing, because if there was ever a time to get space guns and rocket ships from that spooky girl they "rescued" from the freakiest little whorehouse in Tairausuiso, now is !@#$ing it.

Dark Star isn't necessary to the program, seeing as how she's just observing and advising. So she isn't there as much, given that the Imperials are shuffling her around Asia and the Pacific to have her help make sure that places the Japanese have taken over stay taken over.

I've talked about the sick !@#$ she did, before, so we don't really have to get into that, again. Except that now she's got better ideas about how to hurt people, given how well she learned from watching us. 

...

That's what always !@#$ing gets me, you know? All these aliens and their weird tendencies to turn us into hamburger meat, or open us up and make us tick? So much of that isn't something they came up with on their own.

I mean, if you've got the power to fly across the !@#$ universe in realtime, then why do you have to get your tentacles bloody to see how we work? !@#$, most of them have medical scanners so precise they can see your !@#$ing DNA dancing around in your pancreas from ten !@#$ miles away. Our most sophisticated means of imaging the insides of the human body are !@#$ing antiques to them.

So all that !@#$ with them landing, collecting us like butterflies, and taking us to pieces like we're pigs in a butcher's shop? That's all !@#$ they learned from us, son. Either that or they're trying to scare us, because they're invaders and body horror is always a good way to strike fear.

(Or they're !@#$ing Spider People, but let's not talk about them today. I don't need another headache...)

...

Anyway. Dark Star. She's playing "I want your memories" with eligible bachelors on far-flung islands throughout the South Pacific with Thunder and Lightning, and Shiro Iishi is trying to develop ceramic bombs to spread the !@#$ing black plague. Then, one day, in 1943, Dark Star comes back with a wicked !@#$ing gleam in her eyes, and has a new idea.

It's not merely enough for us to be physically modified to withstand great oceanic pressures, she tells Shiro. We also have to be mentally modified. Our minds must be fused with discipline, determination, and will, or else we'll get down there, see a !@#$ing whale skeleton, and !@#$ ourselves to death.

Of course, Shiro Iishi's all about discipline (when he isn't out drinking and whoring) so he approves of this. And he lets her set up a new regime of testing within the pingfang compound. He gives her some guards, lets her have first crack at his supply of "logs" (that's victims, son), and asks her to have some promising results by, say, the end of a month.

And at the end of that month is where his diary stops being a clinical but !@#$ing disgusting read, and really goes over Niagara Falls in a barrel full of !@#$ and monkeys.

You see, the Japanese have this weird thing about self-harm as sign of devotion. Samurai would !@#$ing stab themselves in the guts to redeem themselves if they'd failed big time. Their gangsters still slice off their fingers, one knuckle at a time, if they screw up. And people are always throwing themselves in front of subway trains if they think they've screwed up, enough, just to say "sorry."

Well, it's not like she was experimenting on Japanese people, but you have to remember that her understanding of our culture was pretty !@#$ limited. What she got in the whorehouse, and was told when they inducted her, and what she saw at Unit 731, and out in the field? That's all Dark Star !@#$ing knew about us, at the time.

And it's not like the Imperial Army went out of their way to tell her otherwise. Not when she's doing such good and creative work, and has promised them the !@#$ing stars if they can get her back down to where she !@#$ing came from.

So she gets a group of healthy male prisoners together, and sequesters them from the rest of the population. She gets them to see her as their protector, and then she tells them things, together. And she tells them these things night and day, over and over again, until they believe them heart and soul.

And then, once she's convinced they really do believe it, totally and completely, she challenges them to prove it. She tells them to show her they have changed. Show her they have become something entirely new.

Show her they reject the life they had before, and with it the one thing that truly identified them from that life.

She gives them a small amount of powerful painkillers, a mirror, and a knife.

Not all of them live through the !@#$ing thing, as you might expect. But by the time the first experiment is done, she has two men who are so !@#$ing loyal that, once Shiro Iishi tells her to take it one step further, they gladly slit their own throats at her command.

He !@#$ing loves it. So they do it again, and again, each time changing things a little. And while they find that their prisoners respond to threats, and appeals to loyalty, the best results they get are by finding broken people and making them feel loved.

And that's how the first False Faces were made, son. Chinese prisoners of war who listened to an alien who told them that she loved them, and wanted them to change themselves for her.

There's still more, here, son. This diary goes !@#$ing bat!@#$, shortly thereafter, and you'll just love what happens when Shiro's party friend gets back to him.

But before we get to that, you are having a !@#$ing drink. Trust me, you're going to need it.

Down the hatch, son.

(SPYGOD is listening to Cold (The Cure, remixed by Denny JT) and having a !@#$-ton of Beijing Gold)

9/19/12 - A Monument to the Ruined Age - Pt. 1

It's a humid, rainy night in Beijing, and I'm half-in, half-out of the window of the room I've been dossing down in, trying to un!@#$ my brain.

Normally, getting outside in this kind of weather clears my head up faster than a bullet through the noggin. But not this time. This time, my brain is being a stubborn little !@#$hole, and hanging tooth and nail onto the nasty drunk I've foisted on myself.

(And I would be right out of tjbang sticks, now wouldn't I? God !@#$ing !@#$ it...)

Now, you're probably !@#$ing wondering why my !@#$ neural matter is being so mean about this? Well, there's two reasons, son. The first is that, after drinking about ten pots of the !@#$, I am righteously !@#$ing toasted on baijiu, which is some really nasty stuff, and best left to the locals, foolish tourists, and diesel engines. And the second...

...

The second is that, after burning down a !@#$ing building to get to the truth, last night, I have just discovered that the truth is way more than I can wrap my head around, right now.

Way !@#$ing more, son.

You see, all this time I've been treating GORGON as just another !@#$ing group of science terrorists. And while I always believed that they were the most !@#$ dangerous and messed up of all of their peers, it turns out I had no !@#$ing idea just how bad they actually were. 

!@#$, son, if the Nazis had fallen in with the Spider People, recruited a few nasty, best-forgotten gods to their cause, and set up shop on that one certain sunken city just south of Easter !@#$ing Island, they wouldn't be a tenth as !@#$ing dangerous as GORGON has been all along.

Turns out we've been living on borrowed time. It's only now that they've !@#$ing taken over that I finally get to see the !@#$ing clock.

And I am so very, very !@#$ing sorry to have to say that I have clearly been dropping the mother of all big !@#$ balls for the last five decades or so...

But yeah, let's back this caravan up to the county line, son. I went into a somewhat-unassuming repository for dodgy data that the People's Republic of China would really rather not admit to having, took quite a bit of it under my arm, and then lit the place on fire behind me so they wouldn't !@#$ing know what I took. 

It went up like a charm, and then down like a Thai Ladyboy on my magic alien lovesnake. And by the time the !@#$ Harbin fire department made it around, the place was a glowing pile of cinders, and I was halfway back to !@#$ing Beijing with the goods.

Since then, I've been alternating between reading what I got, cross-referencing what what I knew, and drinking myself blind on this nasty, pungent !@#$. And while I'm happy to say that my hunch was right, and there was a definite connection between Unit 731's activities, Japan's Super Soldiers, and what would eventually become GORGON (and now !@#$ing Imago), that hasn't detracted at all from the harsh as nails understanding that I !@#$ed up.  

Bad.

How bad is bad? Well, son, let's review some ancient history, and stop me when get to something you already !@#$ing know.

At some point after we decide to !@#$ing open them up like can of sardines, the Japanese go on a war footing and start doing a Pacman on their neighbors. Now, there's a lot of reasons behind it, and while there's some things I could say about the truth behind those reasons, a lot of it's !@#$ you're either not cleared for or !@#$ I don't feel like getting into.

Why? Because I'm !@#$ing drunk and testy, son. And armed.

So let's skip to the !@#$ing obvious. The Japanese go into China and decide to stay. They set up a puppet government, move troops further into the interior, and plan to march across Asia, one little bit at a time.

While they're here, in China, they set up what they call the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwangtung Army, otherwise known as Unit 731. And it's a classic case of !@#$ing army doublespeak, because what they're really doing is looking into causing epidemics. It's a giant skunkworks for making !@#$ing plague bombs and researching how to spread diseases amongst the enemy in wartime, and they're using human prisoners as test subjects.

And that wasn't all they were !@#$ing doing, there. In addition to finding new and cruel ways to give people typhus, the black plague, and the !@#$ing clap, they were also performing weird and cruel medical experiments. They'd yank your stomach out and sew your neck-tube straight to your !@#$ing intestines. They'd freeze you and thaw you to watch you melt like an ice cream bar. They'd cut your !@#$ arms off and sew them back on backwards, just to see how they worked.

And then they'd !@#$ing vivisect your !@#$, without anesthesia, just to see the effects on living tissue.

You knew all that already, right? It's something you don't get taught in !@#$ing high school, 'cause Pearl Harbor was bad enough, apparently. But there are reasons why a lot of South Asian countries still !@#$ing hate Japan, almost a century later, and they never really appreciate the fact that we somehow don't know why.

Lucky for you, son, you got SPYGOD to tell you what's !@#$ing what. So you know the score. Or, at least we thought you did. 

I told you that the Japanese had their own strategic talents, before and during the War. I told you they were some nasty !@#$ers, put to work in a nasty war against soldiers and civilians. And I'm sure you remember that three of the nastiest, most sadistic ones vanished towards the end of the war, somewhere in New Guinea.

And I know you remember when happened when I found the three of them, June of last year, when I made the really bad !@#$ing mistake of trying to go after GORGON with a handful of Agents and a single, poorly-used Super.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about the worst of the three, son. Let's talk about Dark Star -- the nasty !@#$ing !@#$ that eats your memories right out of your head like a woodpecker knocking on a tree.

I knew that the Japanese found her in a brothel for really !@#$ weird clients, and that she was turning tricks for men who wanted her to suck the bad memories right out of them, right along with their joy juice. And I knew they took her in, brought her up to speed, gave her a !@#$ing uniform, and sicced her on whatever nation they were invading at that time as a combination interrogator and fear weapon.

What I didn't know? When she wasn't traipsing through the jungle, looking for villagers to terrorize and partisans to brain-!@#$, she was hanging out at Unit 731, "observing."

One of the things I got out of that lockup are fragments of the diary of one General Shiro Iishi. He's the mother!@#$er who put Unit 731 together, designed the set-up, and oversaw its operations, right up until the war came crashing the !@#$ down around his head, and he and his cronies all ran like !@#$ before the Soviets caught up to them.

After the War, we got hold of him, and essentially let him off the !@#$ing hook in exchange for his information on biowarfare. It wasn't one of our country's best !@#$ing moments, but it was nothing I was involved in. In fact, by the time I found out about it the deal was decades old, and all I could do was keep the !@#$ing secret.

But looking over those files, and reading about his debriefings, I always got the sense that he was holding something back. There was something missing in his otherwise-frank recollections of what they'd been !@#$ing doing, there, with all those prisoners.

And when someone'll !@#$ing calmly tell you about how they put some poor Chinese guy in a pressure chamber, just to watch his guts fly out his !@#$, you really have to wonder how bad what he wasn't talking about actually was.

Well, here's the big secret, son. You want to know the reason why they were doing those nasty-!@#$ medical experiments that didn't have anything to do with spreading disease?

He was doing them for her.

Apparently, not long after he got the Pingfang facility up and running, he received orders that this weird-!@#$ girl was coming over to observe the goings-on, and that he should indulge her curiosity. Of course, they never !@#$ing told him why, and he didn't ask, but over time she told him enough that he not only understood, but supported it enthusiastically.

According to Dark Star, she wasn't just some !@#$ weird kid they'd found in a seaside whorehouse. She was a member of an advanced race of beings, whose ship was crashed underwater, halfway across the !@#$ing Pacific. She'd managed to come ashore, years ago, but the experience had messed up her mind to the point that she was lucky she should walk and chew gum at the same !@#$ time.

So of course, when she accidentally puts the whammy on some fishermen who find her, the underground gets their hands on her, she winds up at the freak whorehouse in Tairausuiso. But with the push on to find people with usable powers, the Army comes in and collects her. And it just so turns out that her handler's a friend of Shiro Iishi, who's also quite fond of paying for !@#$, as it turns out.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Dark Star tells the Army that there's a ship down there with massive amounts of weapons, wealth, technology -- everything they !@#$ing need to win the war. And they believe it, but obviously they don't have the technology to go down there and get it. So she agrees to help them look into finding ways to help humans survive down there.

And that's why they've got soldiers testing frostbite conditions and pressure situations on Chinese and Russian prisoners, and why they're messing with the human body and seeing what kind of stress it can take and still survive. She wants to find out how much work they have to do in order to get men down as far as her ship is, and rescue her people.

At least, that's what she !@#$ing says.

There's more son. Lots more. But if you'll excuse me for a moment, I think I felt the atmosphere shift, and that means I might just be able to get my ears to pop, and get myself on the road to un!@#$ing my skull.

Help yourself to some Baijiu while you wait. Don't have more than a few sips, though. That !@#$ will !@#$ you up.

Doesn't it always, though.

(SPYGOD is listening to Cold (The Cure) and having some really strong, Chinese alcohol you should !@#$ing avoid)

9/16/12 - (Unit 731) - I Would Have Left the World All Bleeding

COMPANY files

RE: Unit 731

Cross-reference: Anthrax Outbreak; Biowarfare; China; Human Experiments; Harbin; Imperial Japan; Manchukuo; Pingfang; Shiro Iishi; Soviet Union; Sverlovsk Closed City; War Atrocities; World War II   

"I heard about preparations for bacteriological warfare in Japanese Army for the first time after assuming my post on December in 1939 as a member of the Quarantine Unit of the Kwantung Army... namely the Ishii Unit, by the War Ministry, and assumed my post... On the basis of the facts and the work carried on in the corps under the leadership of ... Ishii, with which I was well acquainted, I hereby certify on my responsibility that experiments were conducted in the Ishii Corps in which living human bodies were sacrificed in testing." 

- Major Karasawa Tomio, September 1946 

Unit 731 was the proper name of the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwangtung Army. It operated in China, in Japanese-conquered Manchukuo, from 1937-45, when the end of World War II put a halt to their experiments. Its commander was General Shiro Iishi -- a highly brilliant researcher with a taste for baser pleasures, and no compunction against committing atrocity in the name of science.

Ostensibly created to research the prevention of plagues, and develop cures for epidemic-causing diseases, Unit 731 truthfully acted as a means for the Japanese Army to spread those maladies amongst the enemy. They experimented with transmitting cholera, anthrax, typhoid, tuberculosis, and the bubonic plague, as well as venereal diseases, and other incapacitating diseases, during wartime.  

"No matter what was done, anything was permissible so long as it was 'for the country' or for the 'good of society.' ... In everyday society, there is no such distinction on reasons for killing. In the field of science, however, killing can result in new findings or a revolutionary breakthrough which would benefit all of mankind."

- Tsuneishi and Asano, 'Suicide of Two Physicians' 

To test their numerous theories, they needed massive amounts of human subjects. Somewhere between 3000 and 12000 people -- mostly Chinese citizens -- were slaughtered by the Unit's scientists at the central camp at Pinfang, in Harbin. How many victims died at other, more far-flung experimental camps at the edges of Japan's zone of conquest is still not known.

They were not called prisoners, or even subjects; they were called "maruta" -- "logs."  

Later, they passed through tunnels to an underground laboratory. "Instantly, an unbearably strong odor choked me. I remember that we passed through a hallway with at least 10 doors on either side. Each doorway was covered with black and red curtains." Suddenly, "a door opened. Three men pushed a surgical bed that contained at least 3 corpses into the hallway. They were covered with a white sheet"

- Harris, "Factories of Death” 

Such "logs" were infected with various strains of diseases, introduced to them through many different vectors. They ate infected food, drank poisoned water, or were "inoculated" with the disease. They were also subjected to explosives designed to spread the diseases, and then watched as they died from wounds and sickness. If a subject survived too many experiments, he was considered "ruined," and put down with an injection of potassium cyanide.

The Unit's victims were also experimented on in various different ways, in order to satisfy the researchers' medical curiosity. They were subjected to frostbite to test new cures, taken apart and sewn back together, and injected with horse urine. They were placed in special pressure chambers, and observed as their eyes popped from their skulls, and organs from their anuses. Some were spun to death in centrifuges, others left hanging upside down for hours to see how long it took for them to die.  

They were exposed to phosgene gas to discover the effect on their lungs, or given electrical charges which slowly roasted them. Prisoners were decapitated in order for Japanese soldiers to test the sharpness of their swords.

Others had limbs amputated to study blood loss -- limbs that were sometimes stitched back on the opposite sides of their body. Other victims had various parts of their brains, lungs, or liver removed, or their stomach removed and their oesophagus reattached to their intestines. 

- Hudson, "Doctors of Depravity."

For many "logs," their time at the Unit ended in extreme pain and horror, as they were wheeled to an operating room and vivisected. The doctors wanted to see how their diseases had worked on living, pulsing tissue, and not the cold, dead remains of a man or woman put down by more humane means.  

That this operation is not better known throughout the Western world is no accident. After the Japanese surrender that ended World War II, the Americans declined to put the Japanese officers of Unit 731 on trial, as they had with German war criminals. Instead, they appropriated their researches for their own use, and quietly allowed even the most heinous researchers to re-enter Japanese society without so much as a slap on the wrist. 

General Shiro, in particular, opened a free clinic after the war, and died quietly of throat cancer in 1959. Some sources claim he was actually in America the entire time, advising on bioweaponry. 

Some sources make darker suggestions. 

If Ishii or one of his co-workers needed to do research on the human brain, then they would order the guards to find them a useful sample. A prisoner would be taken from his cell. Guards would hold him while another guard would smash the victim's head open with an ax. His brain would be extracted and rushed immediately to the laboratory. The body would then be whisked off to the pathologist, and then to the crematorium for the usual disposal. 

- Harris, "Factories of Death" 

The Soviets, however, took a much less generous view of the ill treatment of their Chinese allies. Any members of Unit 731 they got their hands on were put on trial, excoriated for their misdeeds, and sent to do hard labor in Siberia. 

America discounted the trials as "communist propaganda," and refused to comment on what the Soviets may have done with the information, researches, and materials it confiscated from its prisoners.

Their tour concluded with a visit to still another exhibition room. Before entering, the veterinarian cautioned them that "Nothing in here is pleasant. All the specimens you will see came from dead bodies of different infected disease carriers. You can look through the open door." The veterinarian opened the door to the frightened youngsters. They observed a "room full of glass jars containing human heads, arms, thighs, hearts, spleens and sexual organs. All the specimens were soaked in formaldehyde."

 - Harris, "Factories of Death"  

In 1979, at the "closed" military city of Sverdlovsk, a horrific outbreak of Anthrax spores took place from its clandestine biowarfare lab. The accident was typically Soviet: caused by bureaucratic bungling, its true reason was covered up, and true effects were grotesquely downplayed. 

According to the Soviets, only 100 people died from eating tainted meat. However, after the end of the Cold War, subsequent international investigations turned up the fact that Sverdlovsk had bred one of the deadliest anthrax strains in the world using research taken from its Unit 731 prisoners; it had been those spores that had caused the deaths, and not food poisoning.

But, thanks to non-bungling state suppression of the truth, the real death toll might never be known.  

The remaining grounds of Unit 731's main facility, in Pingfang, is a people's museum that purports to tell the whole story of what the Japanese did there. The retreating army supposedly took all their notes and samples with them, but there has always been suspicion that some of what they made or used was hidden away, somewhere that neither the Americans nor the Soviets ever found. Whether the Chinese found these things or not remains a point of speculation.

Another point of speculation is what the Soviets did with their bioweapons laboratory in Sverdlovsk after the accident in 1979.  

Their guide had still one more treat in store for his visitors before they were permitted to return to their school. Once outside, he ordered a soldier to bring him a horse. He then fed it some wheat that had been contaminated with a pathogen. "A few minutes later, the horse lay dead."  

While waiting, they observed that "the great chimney was sending out dark yellow smoke that discharged a terrible odor. We thought that the veterinarian gave an order to burn the horse he had just poisoned." 

- Harris, "Factories of Death"

(Notes on possible GORGON involvement with Unit 731 are classified at Triple Black, Directors' Eyes Only. Do not even !@#$ing ask, Agent.) 

Last amended: 12/28/11 

(SPYGOD is listening to The Drowning Man (The Cure) and having a Harbin Lager )