IGKTW (Round 3) Forty Yards Down (688 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Negroes
Rating: 1.6 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-05-09 19:17:20 EDT
[Transcript of 5/31/2171 communication between inmate 45505015 Arthur David Janks, and San Angeleno Daily Call reporter Steven McAllister during regular penitentiary visiting hours. This record has been sealed and has not been approved for release to the general public. Mr. McAllister has recently revisited History Camp {6/04/2171 - 11/11/2171} and has signed affidavit DOC-AA01002030199, collectively compelling his silence on this matter and refreshing him on the recent history of our great nation, before, during and after the Last War. Please note that outdated equipment is blamed for the poor recording quality which left most of Mr. McAllister's side of the conversation unintelligible.]
BEGIN Friday, May 31st, 2171, 10:14am
Arthur David Janks: Hi Mr.— Hello? Hey, Mr. McAllister, I— I can't hear you until you pick up the handset. Pick up the handset. The handset right there. Pick up the fucking handset you ignorant cockmonkey or I'll—
Steven McAllister: Can you hear me?
ADJ: Yeah, sure, Mr. McAllister. Good to see you in the flesh, after we been writing and all.
SM: This isn't {unintelligible} expected.
ADJ: Yeah, you think the safety glass window and the handsets are old-fashioned, you should see inside this place. Hell on earth, Mr. McAllister, but at least I got my own cell.
SM: {unintelligible} interview?
ADJ: Yeah, we're good. The warden gave his okay, otherwise you wouldn't be here. And the CCLU had a lawyer fighting for me to make sure my freedom of speech wasn't fucked with.
SM: Doesn't the Christian Civil Lib— {unintelligible} your point of view?
ADJ: Oh, sure, Mr. McAllister, just like everyone else in the country. They all hate what I'm saying but at least they are real Americans and support my right to speak. You know, ever since the government locked down the country and sealed the borders after the Last War, the only news we all get of the outside world is what the state, uh, what the fuck's the word, you know, things approved by—
SM: State-sanctioned?
ADJ: Yeah, Mr. McAllister. That's it. Anyhow, everyone says this is a new America, a better America, an America that has finally fulfilled its destiny, but who's telling us that? The government. Who runs the History Camps? The government. Who owns the libraries and runs the schools? The government. Who makes sure that only people like us get into the country and that no one leaves, and hey, why would you want to leave paradise, right? The government. Who controls the information we get when we leave school, tv and radio and the net and newspapers—
SM: I hardly think that I am being controlled {unintelligible} assignment was my choice.
ADJ: Sure, Mr. McAllister, keep telling yourself that. And what did they tell you about me? That's I'm crazy? I'm dangerous?
SM: I understand you are the first person to receive a death sentence for seditious acts against the state since the Last {unintelligible}.
ADJ: Yeah, and when people hear that, they think I'm crazy, maybe making home made bombs or writing submersive letters.
SM: Subversive.
ADJ: Yeah-yeah. You know why I'm really here, Mr. McAllister? I never been in a fight in my life. I always say the Pledge of Allegience, and I mean every single day cause I fucking love this country. I worked hard and paid my taxes and never broke the law. No, I'm here on death row, forty yards down, as they say. A hundred and twenty feet from the gallows and the rope swing, just cause I sang a song, Mr. McAllister.
SM: {unintelligible} file provided by your lawyer informs me that you were employed by ReClaim, helping rebuild ruined neighborhoods and {unintelligible}
ADJ: Yeah, that's right. Not that it was hard work cept for the shoveling. How old are you, Mr. McAllister?
SM: I'm twenty-four, not that—
ADJ: So you was born, uh, wait now... in twenty-one forty-seven, right?
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: Now I was born in oh-eight. That's only six years after the Last War. You know the dates of that war, schoolboy?
SM: {unintelligible} from twenty forty-eight to{unintelligible}
ADJ: That's right. The whole shebang ended in twenty-one oh-two, six years later I come along, and sixty-three years later, here we are.
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: Now, when I was your age, ReClaim was way bigger than it is now. Remember, during the war all the big cities got dusted, from Los Angeles up to San Francisco. Ever seen what a duster does, son?
SM: I believe they are ultrasonic {unintelligible} break down molecular structures leaving nothing {unintelligible}
ADJ: Yeah. That's how it reads in the history books. Sounds quick and clean, huh? Reduce buildings and possessions and people to dust. Turn cities into deserts of the stuff, nothing but gray dunes to be shoveled into trucks and mixed into mortar and cement for rebuilding. But did you ever wonder why the dusters were used?
SM: {unintelligible} nuclear contamination was far greater than the threat of {unintelligible}
ADJ: Yeah, that's what they tell you, Mr. McAllister. They say that the cities were full of rebels and agnostics who wanted to throw down the government, and all that strife led to the Last War. Liberal Agnostic Seditious Terrorists had infiltrated every city across the country, and had sleeper cells everywhere. They had to be wiped out before they destroyed the good Christian heartland ofAmerica.
SM: These are all facts supported by the historical record.
ADJ: But why the dusters, Mr. McAllister? Why use a bomb that wiped out every single trace, from skyscrapers to sewer mains, so all that was left was United Militia compounds and places like this penitentiary out in the middle of fucking nowhere?
SM: It may have been overkill, but—
ADJ: No, Mr. McAllister. That's what they want you to think. They want you to think, yeah, our fathers and grandfathers fucked up big time, trashed civilization, nearly brought an end to everything.
SM: {unintelligible} and executions for those responsible.
ADJ: So they say. I say different. I say that the dusters were used to fight a war no one remembers. A war of extermination. A war to remove people not like us from the face of America... hell, maybe the world. It was a race war, Mr. McAllister.
SM: That's a myth we've all heard before, right up there with Santa Clause and fast food that served billions. We {unintelligible}
ADJ: Look around, Mr. McAllister. Just look around. Didn't it ever strike you as funny that everyone is white? White Christians?
SM: {unintelligible} saying?
ADJ: I'm saying, there were negroes, once.
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: No, it isn't a fairy tale. There were black people once. They had dark brown skin and they originally came from Africa.
SM: {unintelligible} the island that elephants and gorillas came from before it sank when a volcano {unintelligible}
ADJ: No, no, kid. I mean, Mr. McAllister. Look. There were all kinds of people once. Before you or I was even born there were brown people.
SM: There are already brown people. They are Latinos, and they make up 58% of the pop— {unintelligible}
ADJ: No, man, no. This is what I'm talking about. See, before the Last War, the race war, there were black people and yellow people, called Asians, and red people, called Indians, who lived here even before the whites or the Latinos—
SM: {unintelligible} ridiculous waste of my {unintelligible}
ADJ: —and there were Jews, too.
SM: Next you'll tell me there were werewolves and shadow people and {unintelligible}
ADJ: Look, the best I can figure it was like this. Over a hundred years ago a whole bunch of little bands got together. Bands of white men who thought they were better than anyone else. They created the United Militias, and eventually got hold of duster bombs. Maybe over time they got people elected into positions of power, I don't know. But there was a race war that lasted fifty years. And everyone who wasn't a white or a Latino was just gone, after that.
SM: {unintelligible} shit and I am going to tell my readers exactly that and {unintelligible}
ADJ: See, Mr. McAllister, that's why there are sealed borders, and government control of all our information, and History Camps for kiddies and grownups. From the moment we are born we are told there was a war of whites on whites and oopsy, they goofed, but that's in the past. Better to admit to a terrible error than expose the horrible truth, I say.
SM: Genocide is what you are talking about. Genocide. And not a shred of proof.
ADJ: Yeah, well, I had some at one time. It was taken from me.
SM: How {unintelligible} convenient.
ADJ: Listen, Mr. McAllister. You see Latinos everywhere you go, right? In shops and on the street and in your office and probably even in your home. But do you know one Latino, just one, in a position of any authority?
SM: Jose Pacheco! He runs the outfit that landscaped my {unintelligible}
ADJ: Come on, son. You can do better than that. I mean someone in a position like yours. Lots of education, never gets his hands dirty.
SM: No, but I {unintelligible}
ADJ: Yeah, yeah, gimme any excuse. Look. You're single, right? Have you ever considered dating or marrying a Latina?
SM: {unintelligible} not, but that's just my personal {unintelligible}
ADJ: Personal preference, huh? Well, let me tell you, I've never seen a white man and a Mex girl together, even though some of their women are hot as hell and hey, it's okay for us to visit them in whorehouses, right?
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: You're looking a bit uncomfortable. And you're uncomfortable because you are thinking. Thinking about what you been taught since you were a kid. That's good, and bad.
SM: {unintelligible} get around to telling me what all this is about?
ADJ: Sure. I didn't get tossed in here and sentenced to death, sitting forty yards down all by myself because I said any of what I just told you in the outside world. I just sang a song.
SM: Just singing a song would not {unintelligible}
ADJ: Look, here's what happened. I was working with ReClaim, running a 'dozerin the south of what we were guessing was Old Los Angeles. The dozer hit a hollow and I got out to see what was what. I thought it was just a deeper sewer or train line that didn't quite get dusted, but I fell down this fucking hole.
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: Sure I was hurt. Broke my left arm and both legs. If my upper body hadn't landed on an old mattress I would have been toast. I'd landed in some kind of shelter. Maybe an old fashioned bomb shelter. We find them from time to time, or real deep parking structures or sub basements, and of course we always call the site forman and he checks it out before we proceed. This time the site foreman would take a while, cause I was a long way down and it was a while before anyone found the top of the hole I dropped in. I found some books, and magazines. Dead stuff too. TVs and radios. I found CDs like we have now. And I played them, on a player made for kiddies. The machine wound up with a hand crank. The radio built in didn't get shit, but CD player gave a little music out of one speaker. And that's where I first heard soul music and rock and roll music, but most of all it's where I first heard the blues. I also read magazines, and some few pages of a diary still readable, before the batteries in my little belt-light wore out. I was down there twenty-nine hours before a crew came down and got me. By that time I was weak as a kitten, you understand. I don't remember being strapped into the gurney at all... but as they was raising me back up to the surface with the foreman right behind me, I heard a flashburn go off. We use them to burn out nests of rats when we find them.
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: Now hush, I'm nearly done. I think that's why foremen always rush to the deep places. To burn out any traces of these long ago people. And it's all part of the big lie, which I've told nobody but you.
SM: And you want me to print this fairy tale?
ADJ: It's the truth, kid. It's the truth. Why else would they lock me up for sedition? All I did, once I was released from the hospital, was sing out loud in a bar when the boys were buying me a beer, my first night out in a long time. I sang one of the songs on one of the CDs, that was probably recorded in that bomb shelter, or some place like it, by some fellow named T-Bird Johnson. All I could read on the CD was his name, and part of the date, written on the CD in the sixties, and that's the twenty-sixties, son. Here's what I sang...
White man gonna kill us
Gonna kill us, dead and gone
White man gonna kill us
Gonna kill us, every one
White man gonna kill us
Leaving nothing but the song...
SM: {unintelligible}
ADJ: Yeah, sounds crazy, I know. But it's the truth, son. Mr. McAllister. So I confess. I listened to the blues. And I sang the blues. In public. Negro music. And I liked it, son. I liked it, cause it summed up all the sadness and loss I feel, that most of us feel, most of us never knowing why we feel the way we do. And now I'm here, alone, forty yards down. And no one wants anything to do with me. Cause I sang the blues. And that's okay. Cause I'm gonna keep right on singing, till they set me to swing. And when I'm gone maybe one person, just one, will wonder about my crime, the crime of sedition against the state, and my punishment... death. Cause if there were never any negroes, why is enjoying the music, the one song I know that they left behind, why singing that song a crime, huh?
SM: {unintelligible} sure I can run with this.
ADJ: That's okay. My tale is told, and my time is up, in this interview, as well as my time on the row here. The question is, what are you going to do about it, son?
SM: I... I suppose {unintelligible}
ADJ: Okay then. You take care, Mr. McAllister. You take care, son. And remember what I told you.
END Friday, May 31st, 2171, 11:59am
[Transcript of 5/31/2171 communication between inmate 45505015 Arthur David Janks, and San Angeleno Daily Call reporter Steven McAllister during regular penitentiary visiting hours. This record has been sealed and has not been approved for release to the general public. Mr. McAllister has recently revisited History Camp {6/04/2171 - 11/11/2171} and has signed affidavit DOC-AA01002030199, collectively compelling his silence on this matter and refreshing him on the recent history of our great nation, before, during and after the Last War. Please note that outdated equipment is blamed for the poor recording quality which left most of Mr. McAllister's side of the conversation unintelligible.]
User Reviews
Submitted by Orgasmatron (user info) at 2006-05-11 15:27:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I thought the presentation worked just fine.
Good story, good depiction of a future gone white. I mean right.
Eep!
I mean wrong.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-05-11 15:08:16 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
1.5
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-05-11 15:07:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I struggled to read this, too..the format was rough.
Submitted by Beano312003 (user info) at 2006-05-11 10:40:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Like the idea but struggled reading it.
Submitted by Coyote (user info) at 2006-05-11 01:07:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I want a duster!
I'll take the Plymouth version if that's all ya got. I can always stick a neutron bomb in the trunk.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-05-10 23:50:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
and there
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-05-10 23:49:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-05-10 23:49:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
1.33
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-05-10 23:48:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-10 16:28:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Brace yourself, J...
--
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2031-05-10 16:22:09 (#)
Ranking: 0
It was exactly twenty-five years ago today the JonnyX said, "you know I love all that future shit..." and then dropped dead of a stroke minutes later, leaving behind a lingerie collection now housed in San Francisco's de Young Museum.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-05-10 16:09:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you know I love all that future shit...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-10 16:05:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
And away we go...
Chapter 6 of Redemption Road, in progress...
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-10 16:04:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Well, fuck this piece of shit.
Gonna cheer myself up right smart.
Work on something fun.
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-05-10 09:20:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked it...
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2006-05-10 03:43:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Format did nothing for me - sorry Jack
Submitted by kai070169 (user info) at 2006-05-10 00:29:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
hiya Jack
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-05-09 22:05:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
EE TEE ESS
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-05-09 21:54:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jack, your 'utter shit' beats the crap out of most other stuff.
I thought it was pretty good.
Submitted by ConorJS (user info) at 2006-05-09 21:16:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
needs less ets. whenever i type ETS, pronounce it to myself "ehts."
How many of you would say to yourself EE TEE ESS, and how many would say EHTS?
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2006-05-09 19:34:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Very very cool.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2006-05-09 19:26:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
You've done better, and while I would still normaly +2 this, I can't in a contest, sorry.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-05-09 19:18:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Okay, I admit this is utter shit.
I blew my fucking wad on the theme of racism and loneliness in THIS post (http://www.ubersite.com/m/71787) from many moons ago, and knew I couldn't top it.