Andre in Space 2.0
BigBoss calls in favors
BigBoss called in a few favors. Less of that the better. Like I said, I don’t like loose ends. All the paperwork was ready to be slipped in to the DoD servers. A test of an experimental EMT blast-weapon, in the boonies, black-op off the books, all the earmarks secretly approved by the gang of eight, Archer Logistics, all the proper signatures. He even had a program written which created two versions, when then erased all the tracks. Yup, did that part himself too. Crazy cat with skills that pay the bills, code, logos and more stories than you can throw at the wall to see what sticks.
Me, personally, I’m all about quality, not quantity. I’ll take one, loose strand of angel hair pasta, flick it at the Italian kitchen ceramic tile, wait as the olive oil streaks in racing patterns downward, that particular thin yellow film over almost-milky white boiling water, before it suctions, slightly dries and sticks. Soups on! Don’t forget the gravy!
Meanwhile, out in space, Andre, Betty and D4TM2 were hovering over the planet, staring at a circular screen, which seemed to have layers and depth, not quite 3D (turns out it even had 4D functions, you could view different timelines, even alter them) but like onions, layers of an onion, as if there were a holographic layer floating over the flat screen, more than one of them, and were watching the proceedings, with some gathering interest, as one watches the plot of a movie, to figure out certain things one has missed, upon coming in halfway. It goes between attracting your (almost) more than full attention and losing you completely. In truth, D4TM2 was a machine, not a baby, and looked like a small crawling, metallic centipede with five orbs attached to each other and had no eyes to speak of, didn’t seem to have any moving parts aside from a plethora of tiny legs and feed, and two small radio antennae sticking up at the apex of his 'head.' But they treated him like their child, he seemed rather curious, always crawling this way and that, and he did in fact have a 'room' on the rocket with a crib, so to speak, more of a docking cradle for recharging.
They were both undressed and relaxing, she in a black one-piece, with her spacesuit off, helmet placed carefully in 'her corner' of the control room, an obviously prized object, pink and black, with her name on it. He’d just showered, well, space showered, mostly with light, and a fine mist of bacteria, and his coiffed mane was sprayed down with product; his muscular frame, if not quite what his suit advertised, in miniature, attractive enough to distract the dreamily absent-minded, far-off, pallid lost girl, at least momentarily, away from the bizarre, disjointed, nonsensical show they were watching. It was something about some sort of military operation, but it didn’t make any sense.
Why didn’t they just laser the building to enter, or drop an anti-G on their asses? And why didn’t the building’s built in AI detect and destroy them on entry? It was all nonsense. She stared at his pants. Wondering to herself if the enormous metallic bulge on the crotch of his suit was all hat and no cattle. Then she wondered where she knew the phrase all hat and no cattle from. And how she got back with the Space Harrier in the first place. Which he kept, almost incessantly now for the past, what four hours, asking about. Well, it had been four space hours. Seemed like forever, this interminable show on the tube.
Bobby’s parents took the cash. And kept quiet. Apparently. I really thought splitting them up, fucking the daughter, well, one of them at least, was excessive. Glad I wasn’t there. Why they videotaped it I have no idea. No loose ends, I keep telling them. They don’t listen to me. Obviously, everyone only listens to BigBoss. As particular, I won’t say fetishistic, but there are just some points on which he won’t budge, as he can be at times, just the same, other shit he justs lets fly. Not me, man. No way. If I were BigBoss, I mean if I were boss of the outfit, things would be different. Sure different. For instance, why pay them the 5K and if you’re going to pay them the 5K, why not keep good on your word on the other half they agreed to. Nope. Not the way you do things, I’m told. For suckers. Not getting the other half keeps them in fear. Soon as they got the other half that’s when they’d scram, go states' evidence. But then why pay them the 5K to begin with... doesn’t... doesn’t a man’s word- and that’s when they all, and I mean not just BigBoss, start laughing at me. I mean, I have some of them until that point, right. Nope, BigBoss they were just humoring, he says. Never had 'em. Never will. Just with that kind of confidence. Yeah, well.
So. While I was securing the checkpoint, they arrived in a van, the floating office, HQ, BigBoss calls it, I secured the guard, we switched outfits, the tranq shot wore off quickly enough. They dumped him a few towns over loaded up on LSD and drunk out of his mind at a roadside bar, for truckers and bikers and queers. He got assfucked, came out of the closet, left his wife of four years. No loose ends. Meanwhile he coughed up the code. We didn’t use that one, though apparently.
Meanwhile, we replaced the guard at the desk in reception, who was also slipped Lucy, then hypnotized and told to sleep in a closet, after being tied up and untied. He let in the fake computer maintenance team, who, after the 'EMP blast' (which was no EMP blast, not even a bomb) went around removing all the harddrives from all the computers in the building and replacing them with similar, formatted drives, albeit blank, generic ones with the basic proprietry architecture of a reboot.
Andre in Space 2.2.2
That’s where the dirt came in. Dropping the dirt. The old-timers in the old rotary biplanes, often used to inform a woman she’s getting hitched and check out the low rates of these uber self-driving taxis, down the shore, often ignored if not for a kite on the loose, a screaming child, squawking gulls and suddenly your attention and focus shifts, out of the endless blue, a message flits across your vision, the entire sky becomes one giant screen for advertising. It would be odd if they sold Russian brides that way, but the marriage proposals fly.
Well, it’s your rodeo cowboy! You want dirt dropped you got dirt dropped son! Now, did I ever tell ya about the time, back in the big one, now that there’s WWII, not the Korea as some...
Oh boy! And on! And on and on. BigBoss smiling the whole time.
Well, literally, when the dust settled, the locals remembered seeing a WWII bomber flying overhead around the same time. There was talk a new outfit had bought out the old Starlite, as it was still referred to, overgrown with weeds, forlorn, not having seen the likes of the 50 Foot Woman or the The Cockroach from Mars! in many a year, the memories thereby remembered and associated with those hot nights were still fresh. BigBoss paid a utility worker three towns away to black out a portion of the grid for four hours. Apparently you can do that.
Well, that was pretty big news. News was sparse. There was a local. So there was local coverage, town halls, garbage collection. Most of the 'news' relating to the facility was off-limits. One big story that had, unfortunately gone uncovered, for the townspeople, was the passing of a bond for a recycling facility, back when times was flush, before the big crash, well that one bankrupted the town, which was now technically not a town but yet 'nother junk-bond holding, Ponzi-scheme waiting to happen holding corporation, with managers and appointees.
So, at the local watering hole where quaffs were downed, the very same tavern that BigBoss talked his way into and out of with the purchase of one $5 plastic jug of (on sale) domestic beer, for the relevant information, which said transaction was never explicitly stated, he just being a friendly outsider considering moving to the town buying the locals a round, that very night of the operation, all the talk was on the recent news. The recent activity, what with the bomber and the bombs and the new testing facility and people started coughing. Did someone see a radio-active sign at the new site, where they used to play the drive-in movies, and have picnics and baseball games, back when times were good? No one could recall. No one wanted to check now.
All that dust and contamination from the bombs. Must be some top-secret experiment. Best keep their noses out of it. Wait for the DoD to weigh in, if they ever did. Wait for the news to cover it. If they ever did. Didn’t the corporation provide good paying jobs for the locals? Well, not that many really, most of the top jobs went to the top dogs, either former military or big wig scientists. Still, it was more than anything else. When was the last time someone got fries at the drive-in, or sold them for that matter, or the last time the saw-mill or the mine were open? They were good points all. All the factory doors were shuttered, unions dried up after there were no union fee dues paid, new politicians got voted in who promised things and didn’t deliver. They did at least supply a few, well paying, relatively speaking, jobs which offered those lucky enough to get them a little bit more respect, if they did tend to lord it over everyone and swagger and keep to themselves with their top priority A#1 secrets.
There was talk of a petition, but then no one wanted to sign it, they tried to recall the name of their local state representative, but drunk as they were, no one could recall it. Talk changed to sports, high school athletics, betting. Then to music. By the time it came back up again, a few had left due to severe coughing fits. They were advising each other to stay in doors for the time being, wait it out. It’ll pass. No one thought to ask one of the old timer biplane flyboys, course they weren’t out drinking, they were home in bed, at eight sharp, all four of them. Not in the same bed, of course, two with their wives, one with his dog, one with her husband, and her dog.
Well, it blew over alright. That BigBoss. Just dirt. Of course, there was surveillance footage of the bomber flying over the facility, records checked out, whomever rented it was trying to buy bombs as well. Of course, one party had the so-called top secret information, falsely planted, that it was all for a new secret weapon program, featuring a bomb which would only knock out electricity and leave buildings standing, another had the information that an untraceable source had tried to purchase bombs to go with a rented bomber. But they could all agree, out in back of the facility, that it appeared a bomb had been dropped, and that the knocked out water pipe had flooded the bathrooms in three sectors of the facility, making things a nightmare for a few weeks. Enough so that they didn’t want local cops or even the below their pay grade feds poking their noses around. They hired their local usual plumber and landscaper and forgot the matter.
Did it turn up in a report there was curiously little shrapnel, and no sign of the particular type of bomb they were expecting, exploded shell frags at least, nor that while there was a definite rental ticket receipt, there was never confirmed any purchase of an actual bomb? Nope. Because the report was sent above, to those whom wanted it to go away, who were more concerned with why they had been left out of the loop as to this new top secret weapon’s test. And they were told to ignore it, it was above their pay grade, and they were paid to ignore things above their pay grade.
Of course, one of the local kids, who should have been playing baseball, behind the sanctioned off fence on the other side of town at the other site where the Starlite Drive-in used play B-movies for cheap dates in borrowed shiny hotrods with too-long tail fins, ended up with a rusted souvenir sign for a made-up corporation with a fake logo, designed himself, by BigBoss, which vaguely resembled the universal symbol for beware! toxic waste. Another one of them is still up, but sits facing what remains of a copse of wood, at the edge of the old dried up swimming hole, sitting atop a rocky promontory, tough to get at, where only drunk and stoned kids go to celebrate high school graduation, get laid, show off and spray paint their way into immortality, or least long enough until the local prison work squad, two towns over, gets far enough down on their list to white wash over it.
The wind blew over. The landscapers repaired the hole in the ground in the back of the facility, about a ten-minute drive inside the fenced-off grounds from checkpoint charlie, as the crow flies, but about 15 minutes, in reality, what with the turns, through the woods, over the bridge, and all the speed bumps every ten feet or so.
