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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

It is her.

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

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

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


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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not since she spurned him, anyway. 

* * *

The hasty plan goes better than he had hoped. 

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

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

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

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

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

But somehow that does not make him feel very secure.

* * *

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

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

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

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

And she is as beautiful and terrible as ever.

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

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

"The bus took longer-"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," he admits.

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

"I could not be-"

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

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

"But you came, anyway."

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

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

"Yes."

"Do you still want to fuck me?"

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

Having it all and then watching it leave him.

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes... I did-"

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

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

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

He nods. Oh yes, does he ever understand.

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so he does.

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As mine should be-

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

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

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

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

That could be a problem.

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

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

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

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

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

I do not know where your twin is. 

Find out for me?

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

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

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

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

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

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

2765 - pt. 3

So, when we last checked in with Mr. USA and yours truly, we went to the sickening abomination that is Alter Earth, trudged through a sea of blood, come, and !@#$ to the bottom level of The Prosperpinium, found the real President of the United States of America, and blew the happy unholy !@#$ out of the people who'd been mentally and spiritually torturing him for the better part of a month.

I did my best not to shoot anyone who was just here to beg favors from the ultra-white folks, down here, but the fact that I winged a few is not really weighing on my !@#$ing conscience, right now. Conversely, I don't know that Mr. USA held back at all, given how much red he's got all over his face and hands. But thankfully, I think most of the slaves were smart enough to run when their masters were splattered by his fists and feet.

(The clothing here repels liquids better than oil does water, and thank goodness for that.)

I let Mr. USA handle the gentle work, now, while I try to listen into comms chatter and find out what the appropriate response from the city's authorities will be. I can hear the IV and life support being torn off the President, and the moment the gag's off I half expect him to collapse into hysterics and beg us to get him out of here. But, to my surprise, he doesn't.

"Please tell me this is real," he says, getting up on shaky legs, leaning on Mr. USA for support: "Please tell me this isn't just another trick."

"It's no trick, sir," Mr. USA reassures him, helping him walk away from the chair: "It's us. It took us... well, it took him a whole month to find you, but-"

"A month?" the President gasps.

"Yes, sir. How long as it been here?"

"I... I lost..." he shakes his head and can't go on, weeping openly. I figure he meant to say he lost all track of time. And I figure the tears are for his wife and children.

So we let him cry, because it'll be a while before the enemy can muster a response to what just happened, here. And after everything we've walked through, and the horrors we've witnessed, it's the most human thing we've seen all !@#$ing day.

Also the most beautiful.

* * *

At some point, he stops crying so much and talks. 

He remembers how he got here, to Alter Earth, even if he didn't know where he was for a few days. On the day he was going to accept my resignation, a visitor came into the Oval Office and approached the desk, and then something happened. He said he felt weird, as though every piece of his being was being turned inside out and sent somewhere else.

Next thing he knew he was somewhere else, tied up and naked and gagged and blindfolded. Then he was beaten up in a dark room, "abused," (that's all he wants to say) dressed in those clothes, and marched through The Proserpinium in an evil and debased ceremony, with all tableaux and exhibitions going full !@#$ing tilt. 

They put him in the chair, and the people who ran this part of the show explained what had happened, up to a point. They told him he had been taken from The Otherworld (their term for us), and that no one would come looking for him here because everyone there thought he was dead. They told him that he would never leave this place, and would not be harmed, but he would not be allowed to die, either.

But he should not feel as though he were a mere captive! Oh, no. In this fashion, he was as Proserpine, Herself: raped from the world above, and taken down here, to the seat of Plutonian glory, to be treated as a queen.

As a sacred and royal captive, he would spend the rest of his days here, in this place. He would have the esteemed privilege of watching all the glory of the Mysteries unfold before his eyes. And if he came to love these things, in his heart, and truly embrace what was offered, then they would let him out, and he could spend his remaining days as one of the elite.

Was this not the most supreme of honors? Was this not a boon beyond compare? Was this not the gift of a lifetime?

Were they not !@#$ing merciful? 

Needless to say, the President, being the bleeding-heart, overly-compassionate, and generally well-meaning person I've come to know and loathe (and occasionally respect) did not see this as a privilege, an honor, a boon, or a gift. He saw this as torture, and a living !@#$ing death, and refused to cooperate. And he did his best to try and rise above what was happening, or at least imagine he was somewhere else.

Unfortunately for him, they anticipated this. They let him get so far, and then hooked up a machine that jolted the back of his knees at random intervals, just to keep him from nodding off into memories or dreams. He got six hours of sleep a night, when the place was closed, but the rest of the time his eyes had to be open and facing forward, so as to enjoy his special little gift.

The sadistic !@#$ers wouldn't even let him go insane in peace.

He gets done with his story just as I get word that they've sent in the Marines, as it were. Somewhere between 100 and 200 fully armored Police are on their way into the building, now, shock batons at the ready. They chant as they march, and while my Latin's a little rusty I'm pretty sure it's praise for Hades and Proserpine, and a promise of doom for us.

I wonder why they're not sending armed folks. Maybe they really think they can just weigh us down with their bodies until we run out of bullets or steam. Maybe they just have that much of a mad-on against guns in this town. 

Me, I'm not looking this gift horse in the !@#$ing mouth before I blow Mr. Ed's brains out. No guns in their hands mean easier going for us. And right now, that's all I !@#$ing care about.

"We need to end this," the President says, rising up steady on his feet.

"I agree, sir," Mr. USA says: "We are getting you home. I swear to you that before this day is over, you will be with your wife and children, again."

"No. Not me. This whole... obscene thing. This place. It needs to end."

"We'll be happy to trash it on the way up," I say, reloading my guns and noticing that some of the Whiter people we thought we'd killed were stirring and groaning.

"This world," he insists: "We are not leaving these people to this... mockery. We are toppling this government. We are not leaving until we have liberated this world."

"There's no point, Mr. President," I say, looking back: "This whole !@#$ing world's hardwired to be bad. You'd have an easier time winning every !@#$ heart and mind in Afghanistan-"

"I don't have time for your usual, sour nonsense, mister," the President lets me know: "You say you can topple governments for breakfast in the name of freedom? Then free. These. People."

"Sir, I think-" Mr. USA tries to say, but I cut him off.

"Look, Mr. President," I sigh: "I know you read the !@#$ing files on Alter Earth. I was there when you did. And I know you were !@#$ scared of the notion that there was an evil reflection of us, just hanging there, one dimensional jump away. And I am really !@#$ing sorry that you had to see it up close and personal, like this. But you might as well ask me to change the laws of !@#$ing physics. These people were wired up wrong from the !@#$ing get-go-"

"Don't you !@#$ing say no to me!" he shrieks, getting up in my face so fast you'd think he was a speeder in disguise: "You didn't see this! You can't know! You have no !@#$ing idea what I've been shown!"

"Oh, I have some idea, Mr. President. I just walked through hell to rescue your ungrateful little !@#$, didn't I? 

"Well I wouldn't have needed rescuing if they hadn't pretended to kill me to get your crazy, gunhappy !@#$ out of the way, now would I?"

"No," I say: "They'd have just killed you. For real. Maybe your wife and kids, too."

"I do not want excuses, (REDACTED)," he yells: "I want you to obey my orders for once. He's the most powerful superhero we've got, and you know how to break things. We smash this rogue nation-"

"Rogue world," I correct him, gently as I can, becoming all too aware that they can hear the marching, chanting cops, now, too: "Rogue populations. Rogue moral codes. Rogue Gods. Rogue destinies. We have no business trying to fix things here, Mr. President, because we can't, any more than they can fix us. 

"Every time they've tried to conquer us, they've failed. It's not because they don't have the firepower, or the might. It's because nothing they do !@#$ing  works. They can kill people and cause panic, but when it comes to putting a government together, or making us obey, it all falls flat on their face. 

"Our world rejects them, just like your body does to a splinter. That's why there's usually a time limit as to how long we could be over here, and them over there. The universe is trying to tell us something. Maybe we should listen?"

"That's just an excuse," he says, but I can see the wind's gone out of his sails. That and maybe, with the enemy's voices getting louder and faster, he's feeling the time for argument slipping the !@#$ away.

"Sir, please," Mr. USA says, putting a hand on his shoulder: "I know you mean well, I know you feel for these people, and I can't blame you for being a little hesitant to believe (REDACTED), after everything that's happened."

"Thanks, (REDACTED)," I tell him.

"But, sir, he's right. There is nothing we can do, here. We're in Hell, right now, and these people are condemned. There's no saving them. The best thing we can do is leave."

The President looks at me, then back at him, and sighs, nodding. 

Just then one of the half-dead, whiter folks raises up a little bit and, gurgling blood, lets the President know exactly how disappointed she was in him. How dare he turn his back on this most glorious of opportunities? Did he not understand how lucky he was to be seeing these things, down here, day in and day out?

"We should have killed you when you arrived, you fucking worm," the lady says: "May Hades grind your shade to paste, the better to soothe his sore feet on the worthless jelly of your soul."

Something in the President's eyes changes, just then. He goes from being angry at me for denying him a greater, seemingly more noble kind of revenge to being angry at the people who did this to him in the first place. Being that this is an excellent development, I hand the President the only gun I carry that won't break his wrist if he fires it. 

And I feel very !@#$ good to see him take it, walk over to that lady, and fire it at her face until there's no bullets in the gun, and no face on her skull. 

He stands there, looking down at her for a while. I let him. And then, when we really can't wait any longer, and I don't need super senses to know that the cops have run down to the 5th level, I walk back over, gently take the gun from his hands, and tell him what the plan is.

Not that it's a really great plan, or anything. It involves him staying right behind me, and us standing behind Mr. USA. Quite some distance behind Mr. USA, in fact, so he can take them out for us. 

Unsurprisingly, he's okay with this. So I put my off arm around his shoulder, pull out a gun that I keep for just such one-handed occasions, and give Mr. USA my special, little smile.

"Still want to kill the whole !@#$ing town?" I ask, just as a sea of white-armored cops turns the corner of the 6th and last level, thundering down at us as fast as their burdened legs will take them, and screaming at the top of their lungs.

"And how," he says, and, rolling up his sleeves, walks towards them very !@#$ing quickly.

The rest is white and red.

* * *

One thing that a lot of people don't know is that, while everyone swears they watched lots of Movietone news footage of Mr. USA (known as Captain Courage, back then, they actually didn't. 

Sure, the newsreels said it was him. And there were a lot of shots of him with the troops, before and after the battle. They really liked the ones where he was showing mercy to captured Germans, and accepting surrenders on behalf of the Generals.

But the bits where you actually saw him in action? Leaping into firefights and running between explosions, and picking things up and throwing them? Stopping tanks with a punch and laughing off bullets and shells?

Sorry to disappoint you all, but that was not him. That was an actor in a costume. Those battle scenes were staged well behind the lines, and the German tanks were captured. And the captured Germans were either Allied soldiers dressed up (usually the French, just to !@#$ them off), or out of work actors who'd followed the movietones to do work on propaganda just like this.

The reason is that, in an occasional moment of clarity, the Allied Command realized that it would be a very !@#$ing bad thing if the folks back home saw Captain Courage, Lieutenant Lightning, or any of the other Strategic Talents actually fighting. It would be hard to capture on film, for one, and really dangerous to be around.

And for another, it would be !@#$ing disgusting.

Why? Well, son, let's put it this way. You've heard me talk about how strategic talents liked to take tanks, artillery, and other battlefield objects and toss them around, but do you know what that really means?

Let's take a Panzer IV. They weigh about 25 tons? A ton is 2000 pounds. 

And how much do you weigh? Maybe 200 pounds? And maybe your friends are around that weight, too?

Okay. So imagine maybe ten of your fat!@#$, World of Warcraft-addicted computer friends, sitting in chairs pretending to be researching but really looking at internet porn. That's one ton.

Now multiply that by 25. That means 250 WOW junkies, all sitting around wondering if Leroy !@#$ing Jenkins is going to show up and !@#$-!@#$ their dungeon crawl.

Now imagine a person coming along, and picking all 250 of your friends up, over his head, and throwing them about a quarter of a mile. Hard.

Have you ever seen what a 50. caliber bullet does to a man's head, or body? Imagine something with a !@#$ton more destructive force going through an enemy soldier. 

Imagine slapping someone out of the way and seeing the center of their body just collapse into mush.

Imagine missing when punching at someone's head, but still causing a nasty, skull-rattling concussion, just like a near miss of a large bullet. 

Imagine being able to shrug off all conventional small arms fire, and only being knocked down, or just back, by artillery shells. 

Imagine only having to be worried about other Strategic Talents, which, as the war rages on, get fewer and fewer, and aren't replaced as fast as they once could have been. Which means that, after a while, you really don't feel the need to be all that !@#$ing careful.

And imagine that, when you aren't careful, losing all control on the battlefield becomes extremely !@#$ing easy. 

That, son, is why you never saw film of Mr. USA fighting. Not only did he not play nice, or fair, he didn't leave any Germans alive to surrender to him. Not because he's an evil mother!@#$er, or thinks the Geneva Convention was made for him to wipe his !@#$ty !@#$ on. But because in the heat of the fight, without any U-Men to slow him down, he would kill anywhere from 100 to 500 of the enemy in less than a minute, without even realizing he'd done it.

After a battle, I got drunk to celebrate, or honor the dead. He got drunk to stop seeing the faces of the dead, staring up at him, as though the vision of his world-destroying, near-godhood had been the most mind-blowing thing they'd seen in this life.

That and, just maybe, the last thought to run through their heads was how sorry they were to have not prayed to him for mercy, or deliverance. 

That's what we just sent up ahead of us. Right now, we're carefully walking through what little he's left behind. Every so often I shoot someone who looks like they're on the wrong side of dead or dying, and I recognize that they've got the same look as those German soldiers, back during the War.

The President doesn't know why I'm laughing. It's just nostalgia, really.

I hope so, anyway. 

* * *

The trip up seems a lot slower than the trip down was, oddly enough. Maybe it's because I spent so much of the way down in a daze, trying to convince myself to keep living through it. And maybe because I really want to get the !@#$ out of here.

The President makes most the journey with his eyes squinted or shut. I don't blame him. It's bad enough he can hear what we're walking through, but seeing the occasional remnant of what was left behind in the various alcoves and tableaux on the way down is nothing short of nauseating.

"Should have !@#$ing brought a flamethrower," I mutter after passing the area where the young boy's !@#$-stuffed mouth was being used as a jerk-off sleeve. The only salvation is that the couple that didn't want to be rude or anything was lying there, trampled to death in each other's !@#$-stained arms.

(And, yes, I shot them both in the noggin, on principle.)

By the time we did get all the way up to the top floor, I was smiling. Not long now, I thought. We'd call for Simon, he'd come get us, and then we'd be home, quicker than goose out of a !@#$'s butt.

But then I see Mr. USA, standing just inside the portico, by a statue of Hades mouth-banging Proserpine. He looks back at me, and sighs.

And then I look past him, and realize that we are, indeed, quite !@#$ed.

(Sephiroth - Uthul Khulture. And no, still no drinks)

2765 - pt. 2

This may come as something of a shock to you, son, but in my younger days, I really liked having sex.

Now, I know what you're thinking. "Is this the same SPYGOD who used to bring home Thai ladyboys by the handful for rough, sweaty nights back at The B.U.I.L.D.I.N.G?" And, yes, that was me. Is me, still, really.

But you should have seen me, maybe 40 years ago, after I first got the Chandra Eye and my appetites swelled me up like a !@#$ing balloon. I was a gods!@#$ed sex machine, making it with any guy I could get my hands on, anywhere we could do it, anytime we could get away with it, and sometimes when we couldn't.

Now, I had standards, of course, but I wasn't always too picky. So long as you had two butt-cheeks and a !@#$, and weren't so young that I felt like a !@#$ing chickenhawk, we'd be slamming skin.

One at a time gave way to two at a time. Then three. Then four. Before I knew it I was entertaining entire diplomatic cotillions and taskforces. Then whole superteams. And then...

...

There was a night I broke the boundaries of all that was holy and good, maybe back in the early 70's. I must have had 50 people, that night, in and around a Swiss chalet we'd taken over for an "intense cooperative intelligence briefing." This was back when MI-6 was still fun, sometimes, before all the old public school boys turned out to be commie traitors (or worse) and got replaced with straight-laced types who thought sex was for making children and baiting traps.

And while I was lying there, wondering when the !@#$ I was going to stop still feeling horny, and the owner of every hole I could !@#$ was having to beg off before they needed to go the hospital, and I was seriously thinking of taking them by force and calling it alien possession or mind control or something, I realized that there was no physical limit to what I could do, but there had to be a moral one.

So I went into one of the bathrooms, took a really !@#$ing long, ice cold shower, jacked off until I clogged the drain so I could finally walk and think straight again, and then went about ordering breakfast for fifty-odd odd fellows with sore !@#$holes.

Ever after, I kept the revels frequent, but the numbers down, and the hard-on-impairing alcohol and drugs flowing to try and limit how much damage I could do. I realized the monster was only one or two thrusts away, and did my best to keep him from making decisions for me. It didn't always work, of course, but after I discovered that two or three unabashed Ladyboys are worth a entire platoon of secret sodomites, things have gotten a !@#$ of a lot easier for yours truly.

So whenever I run across someone who hasn't had that road to Damascus moment in their life, or has had it and just breezed on past, and is in a sliding, slimy rush to find the bottom step of the seemingly endless staircase we call "sex," and I have to clean up their nasty, decadent, disgusting, and blood-soaked mess, I have to remind myself that if Percival Reginald Shelly VI (RIP) hadn't whimpered just so when I'd put my hand on his butt and said "round ten?" I'd probably have been locked up in The Z as a !@#$ing super-rapist, or something.

You might be wondering why I felt the need to bring all that up, one level into the Proserpinium?

Well, Mr. USA and I are walking past a well-lit alcove in which ten naked men are standing around a rubber-sheeted bed, jerking each other's meat and waiting their turn to take a loop of a woman's warm, squirming intestines in their hand, and !@#$ it like it was her rack, or something.

The woman's dosed on something and is clearly not feeling anything. Her arms, legs, and neck are wrapped in white rubber sleeves, leaving her chest, stomach, and face exposed. (Not her groin, oddly enough).

They've got her set up with what could only be described as a padlocked, surgical zipper on her stomach, so her innards can be exposed when needed. And by some miracle of modern science, they've got it fixed so that the whole, pressurized mess doesn't come spurting out when you open her up.

The look on her face, as she slides in and out of consciousness, maybe in time with her users sliding in and out of her guts, is terrifyingly beatific. It's like she's seeing her Gods reflected in their sweaty, staring, and twisted faces.

And maybe she is. I can hear her heart giving out, even now. If she lasts through this guy it'll be a miracle, but I wouldn't put good money down on her lasting the rest of the hour, much less the day.

Not to worry, though. I can see behind the alcove, past her handler, who is standing by her head and watching her die with all the interest of a bored  parent watching their kid at a park. And past him, behind a heavy curtain, and two security guards, there's a small ready room with about five more such ladies, all dosed up and ready to go.

And the girls are all. !@#$ing. Smiling.

...

Now, son, I've done things on battlefield that would curdle your soul, turn your hair white, and make you throw up things you ate before you were even !@#$ing born. !@#$, ever since my genitalia became something of a love shoggoth, I've done things in the bedroom that would do the same thing.

You know about some of it. Pay you never see the half of it.

But I have to hand it to her handlers -- this is something that I have not only never seen, but nothing I would have ever thought of in a million years.

And as we go deeper into this temple of licensed, state-approved obscenity, I get the sick feeling that this is just the tip of the !@#$ing iceberg

* * *

Yes, son, we're in the Prosperpinium. We've already seen things here no one has any business seeing, or even !@#$ing thinking about.

And Gods help us, the gut!@#$ing was only the second level.

The name comes from Prosperpina, a lady you probably know as Persephone. That would be the daughter of the Goddess of Nature, who got kidnapped (raped, as they used to say) by Pluto, god of the Underworld.

In protest, Mother Nature shut the !@#$ down, and she didn't start back up again until the other Gods cut a deal with Pluto. The agreement was that he'd give her back for a good portion of the year, but then take her back into the Underworld after a certain time, so he could have some hot love in the cold dark of his home. 

And when she was away, being banged by her husband, Mother Nature turned into a frigid, icy !@#$. 

So there's your fancy explanation for the seasons, son. And, yes, you're welcome. Gotta do what I can now that public schools would rather teach you "world literature" and half-baked, commie nonsense than anything approaching a decent, classical education.

But what does that have to do with gut-!@#$ing, forced orgies, and some of the sickest !@#$ I've seen outside the back alleys of Tijuana, Bangkok, and Cairo combined?

Well, it seems that Alter-Earth never quite threw off the Roman Empire. Instead of Rome crumbling and being replaced by the Catholic Church, like it did on our world (more or less) Rome continued on. A certain Carpenter's Son from Nazareth gained a large cult following, and when he got powerful enough he killed the reigning Emperor without even touching him, and declared himself a God made flesh, and the rightful ruler of the known world.

He reigned for 500 !@#$ing years, apparently. I've never gotten a good explanation for why he left the throne, or if he's actually dead or not, but Rome was the great power, and the only reason they speak English over here is...

Well, !@#$. I don't know. The files I stole from NIID didn't have any clear info on that, any more than they could explain why Rome was destroyed, maybe 600 years ago.

But that's why they give the current year as AU. It was originally AUC, for "Ab Urbe Condita," "from the founding of the city." The city was Rome, and when Rome was destroyed, however that happened, they dropped the C, and now it's just "from the city."

Again, why, I have no !@#$ing idea.

But the important thing, here, is that certain mystery rites involving the rape and return of Prosperpina have carried through into this day and age. It's a dark reflection of what happened on our world, long ago, and Gods only know if this is what it would have turned into, given time. But the population of Alter-Earth considers this nasty place to be church, stress relief, and social equalization all in one, handy package.

You go in, and for some reason no one checks ID, here. You enter a giant, white marble hall filled with giant, white marble statues like the ones outside, all showing very clever and graphic depictions of what Pluto and Proserpina got up to with the souls of the dead, and each other. Then there's some co-ed shower facilities, where the people who just came back can wash off the butcher-shop nastiness they brought up with them.

Then it's into a darkened hallway that's angled downwards at a gentle slope, allowing you to go down to the end of one level, turn a corner, go down another, and keep going like that until you staircase your way to the very bottom.

Where, I am informed, the thing that we are looking for can be found, on proud display. 

Anyone can come in here, even slaves on the occasional day off. Anyone can watch anything, no matter how high or low they are in the pecking order. And anyone can go all the way to the bottom, jerk themselves blind, and then come back up to the top, approaching ecstasy as they finally reach the light outside.

(The fact that many of the people coming back are soaked in red filth, but their clothes seem immaculate, disturbs me to no end.)

But the catch is that, while you can watch the !@#$ing, you can only participate in it as far as your status (indicated by your clothing) will let you. And the further down you go, the "better" the entertainment gets.

"Better" being shorthand for "sicker, nastier, and bloodier," of course.

Like I said, the gut!@#$ing I would have never thought of in a million years was only level two. If I'm interpreting what I'm seeing, correctly, there's five or six levels in total.

Gods help us both. Gods help us all.

* * *

After we get past the third level, and a tableau that has forever convinced me that fathers should never be allowed in the theater to watch their children be born, Mr. USA is so green he could be mistaken for a shrubbery. Maybe it's what we just saw, and maybe it's a nasty smell coming from up ahead, but I take him to one side around the corner, not far from a large group of people who are watching something even more disgusting, and look him in the eyes.

"(REDACTED)," I say: "You have to hold it together."

"This..." he's trying not to cry or whimper, for which I now love him more than I ever have in my entire life: "This is..."

"This is as bad as it gets. Yes."

"Auschwitz. When we liberated Auschwitz, I thought..."

"Yeah," I say: "This is Auschwitz plus Stalin's famine times !@#$ing Cambodia. But we have to told it together, okay?"

"Yeah," he says, hitching a breath: "It's just... I never thought... I always believed we were decent, you know? No matter where, no matter how. I always thought there was a line."

"Yeah, well, wrong world, different line," I say, and I'm about to say something else when I realize someone's trying to get our attention.

"I'm sorry, but could you two be fucking quiet?" a lady asks, holding onto her half-undressed fellow, who looks like he's under a bit of strain: "I don't mean to be rude or anything, but we're trying to get into our headspace and you're fucking ruining it for us."

"Sorry about that," I say, thinking about doing something very rude with my fist and her skull.

"I mean, I don't mean to be rude," she reiterates as her man sighs, gasps, and !@#$s down his leg and onto the floor: "It's just that this is special and sacred, you know?"

"It's his first time here in a while," I explain, watching her scoop up his hot, steaming !@#$ in her hands: "He's a bit overcome. It happens."

"Yeah, well fucking have it happen somewhere else," the guy says: "Not in our headspace. Okay?"

"Not to be rude or anything," she says, licking the !@#$. 

Then they're off to the tableau, where a young boy's just-severed head is being passed around the crowd so people can fill its mouth with their !@#$, the better for the rock-hard men on the stage to face@#$ it.

Something in Mr. USA's eyes goes cold and blank, just then. I've seen that look before. I know exactly what it means.

I whisper to him: "I'll make you a deal. We get all the way to the bottom, and do what we've come here for, and you can come back up here and !@#$ing kill the two of them."

"Just the two of them?" He asks.

I watch as the crowd pulls apart the rest of the kid's body, and shower one another with his blood, organs, and gooshy bits. 

"Kill the whole !@#$ing town if you want," I say, prodding him onward.

* * *

We spend the rest of the trip looking down at the ground before us. It helps a little, but in some ways it makes it worse. Our imaginations kick in where our eyes leave off, and after the !@#$ we've seen and done in our lives, and !@#$ we've seen thus far, it's not helping at all.

For one thing, there's the screaming. Men, women, children, babies. Screaming.

There's the sounds that come during and after the screaming, too. Slicing, cracking, squishing, chewing, !@#$ing.

Worse still, the cheering and sighing and laughing and grunting of the crowds, come to watch and take part in these things.

And the smells. Dear Gods, the smells. !@#$ and methane and the cloying, iron stink of blood. Vomit. Come.

It would appear the clothes here are made of really tough, stain repelling fabric. This is a good thing, because not long after we get to the fifth floor, the tableaux all but erupt from the walls. Industrial equipment takes the place of ordinary torture devices and tools, and blood and less identifiable fluids get splashed, splattered, sprayed, and pressure hosed all over us as we walk. 

But at that point, looking at the ground isn't even helping a bit, because it means we can see what we're walking on. People writhing on the floor, by themselves or with others. Things we both can and cannot identify. The bodies of trampled chidren, many of which bear rapturous smiles, some of which are being !@#$ed by those too lowly to get any action on the stages.

Some of which are begging us to trample them, too.

I've never been anywhere like this. I've never seen anything like this. I've never so much wanted to have a pocket nuke that could go off with the press of one button, just to make this end.

Make the horror go away.

Make the memories vanish.

Make everything go from black to white to nothing at all in one quick nanosecond.

Would that really be so terrible? Just to make it all go away?

Because everything I've ever done, and everything I would do, and the importance of my mission, and finally making peace with Mr. USA, and the reason why we !@#$ing came here in the first place? Right about now I'm about ready to say !@#$ it.

Just !@#$ it all.

But the next thing I know Mr. USA is looking into my eye, and he's saying "(REDACTED), you have to hold it together. We're almost there."

"We are...?" I stammer, still clutching the trigger on the pocket nuke I've made in my head.

"We are. The level's evening out. I hear different noises up ahead."

"Different?" I ask: "Different how?"

"Less... less grunting. More cheering. I think he's up there."

"He better be," I say, letting him prod me forward.

"Make you a deal," he says: "You get all the way to the bottom, and maybe I won't kill everyone in town."

"That... makes no !@#$ing sense," I say, but I smile a little at the absurdity of it all. Then I realize that's what he wanted, and, chuckling morbidly in the face of hell, we go downward and forward.

And then on to the goal.

* * *

The goal is the final floor. Six levels down. One for each month of the year that Proserpine's getting her divine muffin stuffed full of death god !@#$ down in the Underworld.

On this floor, the blood and nastier substances all run down into grates. Just past the grates is a raised platform on which people wearing all white clothing sit around on immaculate couches, drinking fine wines and watching as the lesser people come down, out of the darkened hallway of meat grinders and blood hoses, and beg for favors for their families.

The favors don't come cheap. The ones in white have very inventive ideas on how to dispense justice, or rewards, or mercy. Well-equipped slaves with very specific skills stand nearby, ready to flay, rend, sever, mutilate, and kill anyone who needs a few hundred days' wages for a sick mother, or to buy a family member out of slavery, prison, or an upcoming death sentence in the Colosseum. And well-proportioned men, women, and children also stand ready to perform various acts on the dead and dying, all for the amusement of the best of all possible people.

By now, we're inured to this !@#$. It's almost a boon to just see this, as opposed to something worse than the hell we just stumbled and slid through. But our eyes are not on them.

Our eyes are on a man, sitting in a high-backed chair, on the far end of the room. He can see the entire spectacle from where he sits, his eyes red from crying, his face screwed up from wanting to scream, and a silver muzzle clamped from his ears down to stop him from doing so.

He's being kept alive by IV, from the looks of things. He's also wearing the blackest suit I've seen thus far, maybe reserved for prisoners or the condemned. And he's chained to the chair so that he can't so much as move an inch while this final horror goes on around him.

It's the President of the United States of America, quite alive and trapped here by the people who faked his death, about a month ago.

And as of right now, the only thing that Mr. USA and I can do wrong is let him die for real.

I look at the President. He looks over at us, stops crying, and some vestige of the man I've known, liked, not liked, and wanted to punch in the nose for being such an idealistic moron returns, even here.

Then I look at Mr. USA, who looks at me. We don't need to nod or say anything.

Someone on the platform calls to us, asking (in degenerate Latin, no less) what our worthless petitions might be.

I pull my guns from nowhere. Mr USA leaps forward, fists first.

And we answer with blood and fire, and the fury of what little righteousness we can still claim.

(Sephiroth - Abyssanctum. Still nothing to drink)

2765 - pt. 1

So it's me and Mr. USA, walking through wet, cold, and foreign city in our civies, hoping we can !@#$ing do what we need to without getting made, or doing the obvious thing.

We're about halfway through the city, and within a few blocks of our goal, when we encounter a large public park. The grass is grimy and sloppy with mud, and the trees are cracked and dying, and studded with razor wire to keep people from climbing them. It feels like people died there, and were just left to rot instead of being taken away; for all we know, that may have already happened -- several !@#$ing times.

But it's the only place where we've seen any color at all, so far today. By chance we both spy a single, dying, yellow dandelion by a spartan park bench, nearby. And, after everything we have seen, today, Mr. USA, kind and gentle soul that he is, decides he needs to sit the !@#$ down and regard it.

I let him do that, deciding to walk on my own a little. I cross to the other side of the park, looking at the children there as they play relatively quiet games in the shadow of a dilapidated and labyrinthine jungle gym. I see that all of them wear some shade of dark gray, with heavy pants and shirts for boys and long dresses for girls. They also all wear black armbands on their left arms, each with a large, white O.

They move singly or in pairs about the rusty, dark wreck, not caring to stop for too long. It's as if they're afraid of something in there, and I wonder if maybe the dead bums were found in there, rather than out in the field.

As the children play what might be a strange analogue of hopscotch, or jump in place without a rope, I see there's only one person not in motion. It's a young girl, maybe ten or so, who stands at the top of the slide. I'm not sure if she's just unwilling to go down into the puddle waiting below, or is claiming the slide entirely for herself.

(I also notice that she, alone, is not wearing an armband.)

A man with an umbrella smokes a cigarette over yonder, maybe fifteen feet from the slide. He's wearing a dark gray, somber, double-breasted suit with no collar, and silver buttons. We both nod to one another and I decide to strike up a conversation.

"Nice day for it?" I ask, smiling. He gives me a guarded smile in return and nods, looking at the girl on the slide.

"My daughter," he says, shouldering his umbrella and pulling out a white pack of black cigarettes, along with a silver lighter.

"Cute kid," I tell the man, accepting his kind offer of a cigarette, and a light. They smell like European diesel, and taste worse, but there's something oddly comforting about them.

(Also something strange, just underneath the taste.)

"She is, yeah," he replies, lighting up one for himself and looking over at her, as she stands atop the slide: "So much like her mother."

"Got her eyes, huh?"

"And her ass," the man says, saying it like he was !@#$ing saying anything else, and taking a long, lung-bruising drag off his smoke: "Not that I can really remember, anymore. I shot the cunt five years back when she started forgetting who was boss. You know how that goes."

"Yeah," I reply, praying to !@#$ing God that (REDACTED) is not hearing this, over on his park bench, yonder.

"She's available, if you want to fuck her," the proud father informs me: "My daughter, I mean. Unless you want my wife, too."

"Not really my thing," I say, fighting the urge to punch him so hard his brains shoot out his ears.

"Well, okay. You can never tell. And not right now, of course. That jungle gym's no fit place for you. But I can set up a date-"

"Well, like I said, not really my thing," I say, tapping the cigarette, and finally realizing what I was tasting: minute traces of heroin.

"Your loss," he sniffs, all bonhomie suddenly gone. He flicks the cigarette out from between my fingers, gives me what he thinks is a threatening look, and walks off to the slide to talk to her. When she turns around to regard him, I see that she has the eyes of someone ten times her age.

I could kill him. I really should just !@#$ing kill him. Two quick steps and a punch to the back of the skull and he'd be done with. I'm sure he deserves ten times worse.

But there would be no point. She'd just !@#$ on his dead, shattered face for money, and then see if her aunt or uncle would be her pimp, now.

"I !@#$ing hate Alter-Earth," I mutter under my breath, and head for the park bench where I left Mr. USA. We need to get the !@#$ out of here and do what we came to do.  

Now. 

* * *

Yes, son. We're here, in Alter-Earth, in what passes for Neo York City on this side of the parallel universe line. Year 2765, AU, and !@#$ knows what month or day.

Simon was kind enough to deposit us just inside the city limits, so we wouldn't have to undergo what I understand is a fairly grueling (and quite invasive) battery of checks to be sure we actually are who we say we are, administered before letting anyone in. Unfortunately, he dropped us at the wrong side of the city, so we're having to take more time than we'd like getting to our objective.

Now, the poor kid's done a marvelous job of getting with the program, all things considered, so I'm not gonna !@#$ too much. But, seeing as we have no ID, and no money, and no desire to steal either for fear of being spotted and blowing our cover, bringing who knows what kind of !@#$ing heat down on our heads, that means we're having to hoof it.

It's not all bad, of course. It has been extremely educational, and, for me at least, fills in a lot of blanks left in what little answers we've gotten from captured Alter-Earth citizens before they've reverted back to home.

But I think I could have really gone through life without knowing the answer to some of these questions. Especially when the sane thing to do, upon having the question answered, involves severe bodily damage to the person who provided the answer.

Like the man I just talked to in the park, for example.

* * *

The first thing you notice, inside their version of Neo York City, is that there aren't any !@#$ing colors to be found.

Everything man-made's either black or some shade of gray, usually dark. Every once in a while you'll see something white, but it's usually things like police uniforms, emergency vehicles, soldiers, and any building that's associated with big, face-stomping authority.

Same with the clothes, and it seems that the lighter your colors, the better off you are. So most folks are wearing dark to medium grey, with some light grey here and there. I haven't seen anyone wearing white except for the cops, but when vehicles pull by with tinted windows, and everyone getting the !@#$ out of their way, I figure there's someone in white looking out at us.

This monochromatic thing has the effect of making what color there is extremely beautiful. The grimy, weed-infested patches of wilderness, just outside the city, seem like gardens of paradise by comparison. Also the nasty city park we just sat in, and are now leaving with all due haste before the umbrella guy wonders why I didn't want to !@#$-rape his lovely, broken daughter, and places a phone call to the boys in white.

The next thing you notice is how incredibly !@#$ silent things are, at least in public. People don't talk too loud outside, in the street. Cars whisper by, and I haven't heard any music, horns, or shouting. No friendly greetings or blared announcements. Just the constant, oddly-in-time stomping of people's feet as they walk down the street.

Above the streets, with their drab-colored but nicely-styled cars, the architecture is !@#$ing wrong. There are skyscrapers, but they're made of dark gray or black stone, supported by black, grimy iron or off-color brass. Rows of tall, usually empty arches break up the walls, instead of windows, and what few windows there are tend to be small and high up in the arch. One gets the feeling they're there for light and ventilation only, rather than a view.

(Might also be there to keep people from jumping out, or escaping.)

The shorter buildings are based on the same, dark color scheme, only the first floors are lined with black marble columns, and the doors are all made of glass. Most of these glass doors are guarded by a large, light gray-suited fellow who opens them only upon being shown identification. They also have a secondary function of watching the slaves left outside, chained up like dogs to a large, metal ring to the right of the doorway and made to kneel on the pavement.

Oh yes -- slaves. Naked, rain or shine, save for their bright silver chains. They're every color the Gods thought to put on this Earth, including White. They've had every inch of their bodies depilated, and so many of them have had their facial features mangled, sliced off, melted smooth, or destroyed as punishment for various infractions that it's hard to tell.

People go walking in public with their slaves chained to their belts, carrying their groceries or just walking along, eyes permanently trained on the ground. People ask if they can fondle other people's slaves as though they were asking to pet a dog. People also offer to let you fondle their slaves, which has led Mr. USA and I to some rather uncomfortable moments that we are not going to ever talk about, to anyone, when we get home. 

(We have to allay suspicion that we don't belong here, after all.)

Another point of interest is the lack of writing. While all the buildings have street numbers, none of the stores or buildings have words in their signs. They all have silver on black logos, instead: bundles of groceries denote a shop, what might be a burger advertises a restaurant, and a broken arm is a medical facility. Businesses and apartment towers have imperial-looking icons that are most likely unique. I guess everyone just has to be told what they mean, unless they're all seeing something we're not.

I was hoping to find a newspaper and read it, but I don't see any evidence of there being any. Maybe alter Neo York City doesn't permit newspapers. Or maybe they're just supposed to be inside things, like radios.

Yes, they do have radio, here, and I am not !@#$ing liking it. It's mostly what would be called talk radio, except no one's calling, except to denounce their neighbors for not doing what the announcers are exhorting people to do. There's also "real stories," where people who were caught doing something they shouldn't are forced to act out their transgressions, and apologize to the audience, before being executed live on the air through some very !@#$ing painful methods.

No music. No laughter. No criticism of the leadership of the city, the state, or the nation. Just propaganda, the occasional nugget of news, terror and pain served up as justice and punishment, and hardcore audio sex plays throughout the day.

No television, either, or at least I'm not getting any signals on this half the planet. But that would explain why the Alter-Earthers we catch are almost universally fascinated with the boob tube.

* * *

Police? Oh yes, we've seen a few. It was !@#$ing hideous.

As I mentioned, earlier, they wear white, here: stark, blinding white suits and caps with white, wraparound, opaque plates in the shape of sunglasses that act as communicators. They carry white stun sticks that are quite obviously stained with blood, and not washed all that often.

(No guns, oddly enough, unless they're concealing them.)

The first pair we saw were at the head of an alleyway across the street, ordering male passersby to come into it. We thought it might be an ID check, but then we heard muffled screaming, and saw a long line of men terminating at a battered, bloody, and naked woman. The men were being ordered by the police to gang rape her for some infraction, and we didn't know what was worse: that they were doing it, that the men who were press-ganged into the line seemed annoyed to have been grabbed, or that everyone else who wasn't accosted just kept walking, as though nothing were happening.

"What do you think she did?" I asked Mr. USA, once we were a block away.

"Doubleparked," someone nearby said, shrugging his shoulders: "Not her first time, either. I think the stupid bitch likes it."

A block later, we got to see him accosted by another pair of policemen for some infraction of the rules. He protested his innocence, but they apparently were not impressed, and started to beat him with their batons. Every time the sticks made contact, there was a crackle of electricity and an audible crack. 

By the time we were a block away, they'd caved in his skull. His brains and blood added a rare splash of color to the otherwise-drab road they killed him on.

"And what do you suppose he did?" Mr. USA asked me, as I was listening in to police chatter.

"Turned that one lady in for doubleparking when she actually hadn't been," I answered: "And, no, that doesn't mean they're stopping what's happening to her."

"Dear God," he muttered: "Can we walk any faster?"

"Read my !@#$ing mind, (REDACTED)" I said.

And we did.

* * *

We see more things, between there and where we're going. Strange things. Bizarre and unsettling things.

!@#$ing  horrible things.

And as we swallow our bile and try to look like this is nothing new or terrible to us, and that we're just in too much of a hurry to really enjoy watching the occasional street spectacle, I remember everything that every Alter we've caught alive has ever said to us.

I remember how they seemed puzzled at our manners, and our small considerations. I remember how they sneered at the fact that we were willing to feed them in captivity without necessarily demanding anything from them, as if this made us weak and soft.

I remember how they kept expecting us to do something truly rotten and evil to them at any moment, and kept wondering what the game was when we didn't.

As you might expect, I was the only one who got anywhere with these !@#$s, given that I would just smack them upside the !@#$ing head with little or no preamble, or fake them out with the blindfold, meatball, and "gouged eyes" trick. Everyone else got played with, but my willingness to talk to them on their sadistic level meant they'd at least respond in kind.

Case in point: when the alternate Verve was in COMPANY custody, after that nasty old-lady rampage he pulled, he seemed unnerved by the fact that we were keeping him alive. He kept making these weird, black jokes about prison rape, like he not only expected us to do it to him, but was hoping we would, because it meant we weren't about to kill him. And when we left his cell without hurting him it was like a light went off in his skull, or something, because he couldn't even conceive of a world where people didn't do things like that out of hand.

Sitting in that cell, being treated with some degree of decency and human rights, was literally freaking him out. God only knows if he underwent treatment when he got back, but by the time he and our Verve changed places, again, his brain had the consistency of a bowl of half-eaten Jell-O.

See, near as I can figure out, this world is based on selfishness peppered with sadism, whereas ours works on self interest tempered with kindness.

Take "A Christmas Carol," for example. When we read it, we see Scrooge as a greedy but tragic figure who eventually comes around, and consider it an uplifting tale about the power of redemption. But they read it as a horror story, in which a successful man is haunted by three vengeful ghosts, and eventually driven bat!@#$ insane -- so insane, in fact, that he not only gives his hard-won earnings to those beneath him, but gleefully celebrates a holiday based around forgiveness, giving, and love.

There is no forgiveness, here, on Alter Earth. Forgiveness is weak. And weakness gets you hurt or killed.

There is no giving, here, either. You don't get given anything. You have to earn everything. Even your birth and raising by your parents is a debt you need to pay off, one way or another. 

(Witness the man in the park, and other things we've seen in this walk)

And there is no love, here. Love is an illusion. There's affection and bonhomie, sure, but they'll vanish along with the party favors when loyalties shift, or a betrayal seems more profitable than an alliance.

This place is truly horrible, son. It is the antithesis of everything we believe, cherish, and hold dear. Even the terrorist worms who threaten our security love their children. Even the human monsters who put on spandex and threaten entire countries know what it means when someone looks at you that way, and tells you that they love you.

Even Hitler could have been redeemed, given time.

And and as bad as all this is, it's nothing compared to what's waiting ahead of us, just up the block, at our destination.

Stark white marble, its outside walls writhing with white, grotesque statues all !@#$ing and killing each other, the Prosperpinium beckons.

And God help us, for the safety and security of our own world, we go in.

(Sephiroth - Heliopolis. Nothing to drink, today)

10/11/11 - More Crass Commercialism - SPYGOD's ABCs (pt 4)

Note: Continuing on from the previous three installments. 

Word has it that when the licensing department looked at the feasibility of restarting this project, they looked up the old group editor to see if he was interested in taking control of it. The problem was that the editor had left the company, quite some time ago, and had not left a forwarding address. Apparently, he simply disappeared without even giving a two-week notice, word to his manager, or a hastily scrawled suicide note.

An investigation was launched, just for curiosity's sake. He was discovered sitting on a beach in North Carolina, pretending to be a washed-up whale carcass for what was either a radical environmental concern group, or some kind of performance art. No one was really sure, but he smelled terrible.

Such things seem to be the norm for former COMPANY licensing division editors and managers. After a few years of tending the great money beast, they inevitably crack up, disappear, and go on to new vocations you wouldn't want to tell your parents about for fear of breaking their hearts.

Anything to get away from the threat of a SPYGOD VISION burst down the phone line, or so it would seem. 


The following entries reflect the status of the project at the time of the editor's departure to become a freelance dead fish impersonator. They are choppy, ill-edited, and incomplete, but contain some interesting passages worth noting.
 
S is for SPYGOD SCOUTS

SPYGOD was a kid, once, too. When he was a kid there weren't any cool afterschool things that you could go to and have fun. He was too busy dodging dinosaurs and pirates on the freeway to do that.

These days, there's lots of cool afterschool things to do, but some are much less cool than others. Some groups are evil, unamerican fronts for a communist, one-world government. Some want you to slop out pig !@#$ for lazy farmers too cheap to hire migrant workers. And some are just boring, don't teach you anything worth knowing, and are a haven for bullies and jerks who like to pick on other kids.

That's why SPYGOD created the SPYGOD SCOUTS. Now kids all across America can learn how to make their own explosives, shoot dinosaurs for fun and profit, and defend our great nation from a fate worse than Communist enslavement.



T is for Talents (Strategic, that is) 

When people who had talents and powers well above normal levels started showing up, back before World War I, no one knew what to call them, other than "freaks." They preferred to be called "mystery men," and there were a lot of them, back then. But many of them were drafted during the War, and many of them died overseas.

After the war was over, the "freaks" went back to being ordinary citizens. For some that meant putting on costumes and fighting crime, or creating it. There were lots of fights and showdowns between good guys and bad guys in those days, and soon they started calling themselves superheroes and supervillains. Many people started to like the heroes, because they dressed in cool costumes and were handsome and dashing.

Since only police can fight crime, any ordinary person who puts on a mask and fights crime is also a criminal. But a lot of policemen liked the superheroes, because they were the only ones who could stand up to some supervillains, and even stranger things. The Bureau said that these "vigilantes" were crooks, but no one listened to them because the heroes were so popular. The American Government didn't know what to do.

Then Hitler came to power, and started using his country's superheroes to make war against the rest of Europe. The President suggested a compromise: the superheroes in America could work for the government, and in return they'd be allowed to fight crime. He also said that people who had been supervillains could work for the government, too, and have all their crimes forgiven.

These people were not superheroes or supervillains anymore. Once they started working for the Government, they became Strategic Talents.

U is for United Nations

See "V is for Villains."


V is for Villains 

See "U is for United Nations."

W is for World War II

World War II was a big fight between a lot of countries. That's why it was called a World War. There was another World War, before, but they called it the Great War. Then World War II happened and they called the Great War World War I. If there's a World War III they might come up with something else to call it. Like Armageddon.

World War II changed everything. It gave us the Atomic Bomb and Strategic Talents. It also showed us that fascism was really bad, which was really good because, for a while there, a lot of really rich people around the world thought that letting dictators have the state run the economy was a good idea. And when really rich people have bad ideas, ordinary people get !@#$ screwed.


Ordinary people get !@#$ screwed by bad people, too. Especially when the bad people are powerful, and have rich and powerful friends and a lot of people who will do whatever they want. This is why the Nazis were in charge of Germany, and how they were able to do all the bad things they did. And they got away with it for a long time because ordinary people are often too !@#$ stupid to know they're being !@#$ screwed.

Fortunately, Hitler was stupid enough to pick a fight with his neighbors. This became World War II, and as a result of a lot of !@#$ stupid decisions on his part, Hitler and the Nazis lost the war. He didn't live to see the end of it, though. SPYGOD took care of that.


X is for X-Rated

Hey kids, you know what's going on when your parents go to their room and tell you to go play outside? They might be arguing or just taking a nap, but chances are good they're having sex.

But no one wants to think about their parents having sex because that's !@#$ icky and stuff. And no parents tell their kids that they're having sex because it's private and we don't need to know about it. So we all grow up with this weird sense that sex is something that should be hidden and not talked about because you'll either get in trouble or want to throw up.

SPYGOD has sex all the time. Lots and lots of sex. Usually with Asian men who dress like women. Sometimes with normal guys who like a !@#$ in the !@#$. Sometimes one on one. Sometimes one on a whole !@#$ big pile of guys.

Big guys, little guys. Black, White, Brown, Yellow. SPYGOD's even had sex with things that aren't strictly human, or never were to begin with. In fact, SPYGOD is the first person to have ever had sex with a Martian. And boy was that a weird scene!

SPYGOD has no problems telling people about this because he thinks there's nothing to be ashamed about. He also has no problems telling people about this because it's one less thing that America's enemies can blackmail him with. If everyone knows who you're !@#$, no one can blackmail you, can they?

(Unless you're doing something illegal, like farm animals or small children. In that case, you !@#$ deserve to be blackmailed, !@#$hole.)

So yes, kids, SPYGOD has a lot of sex. Someday when you're old enough to not get other people in trouble for being active with you (see the laws in your state for more information) you can have lots of sex, too!

Until then, get a bb gun.

Y is for Yet Another Day Spent Saving the World

Every day is an exciting new day with SPYGOD!

First, he gets up and takes a shower. Then he takes a lot of strange drugs, drinks a lot of alcohol, and collapses in a heap outside the shower. Then he sobers up with (REDACTED), gets dressed, and has breakfast.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's why he eats a lot of food. Eggs, bacon, cereal, milk, orange juice, vodka, beer, speed, grapefruit, uppers, mescaline, protein bars, smoked fish, methamphetamine, (REDACTED), and a big chewable vitamin the size of a baby's head.

Then he

(Editors note: This is !@#$. Total complete !@#$. This is not funny. No one will laugh at this. Do you !@#$ understand? Seriously? Any of you? I want funny. I want !@#$ your pants laughing funny. And I don't care who I have to kill to get it!)


Z is for (REDACTED)


...

(SPYGOD is listening to Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful (Paloma Faith) and having some tasty OJ with something mysterious and x-rated inside it)