Paper (967 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: Compound_Tales
Rating: 1.94 on 27 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-08-27 15:44:43 EDT
Paper
(A Compound Tale, For Bubba and Alwaysaneagle)
Compound West, Summer 2006
Come in, son, come on in. Take a seat. Let me grab you a cup of coffee. Got my own machine here, a Briel, makes a wonderful cup.
No, please relax. We have time to chat. You aren't on the clock until nine, and it's what, eight-thirty? In a half hour I start showing you the ropes, what it takes to maintain the Print Documents section, but until then we can shoot the breeze.
You made good time, considering it was your first time following one of our hidden roads. Quite something, aren't they? From the highway it looks like nothing but desert and rocks out here, but once you find the camouflaged road markers, well, you've seen for yourself.
We have a small city out here, funded by and hidden from the American taxpayer.
Here, try this. See? Told you it was a good cup of joe.
How long have I been with the Compound? Well, since nineteen seventy-two. I've seen Presidents come and go. I've seen Directors of the Compound come and go. I moved out here in the late seventies from the Compound in Virginia, when they first set up Compound West. I've seen a lot of strange things over the years, things I can't talk about with anyone... but you, right? You're one of us now.
And I am glad you're here. I'm looking forward to retirement. I've loved this job, but I want open spaces, maybe a cottage on a lake somewhere. I've had enough of riding an elevator underground and reading under fluorescent lights while breathing filtered air.
You were recruited out of college, huh? Me too. It's a good life, young man. Great pay, endless reading material, and relatively safe, too.
I mean, you go down a few levels in the installation, things get risky. The pay grade goes up, but would you want to work in Advanced Mechanics, or Bioengineering? Would you want to risk getting ripped in half if one of our endless series of android prototypes goes berserk, or getting eating alive by some genetically altered fungus?
You bet your patootie both of those things have happened. And more.
Ever heard of stone sickness? It took out seven men back in the late sixties. That was about the time the military brass gave up tinkering with the wreckage of the extraterrestrial ships that came down in Roswell back in the forties and sent it all here for us to play with. The men who opened a hidden compartment inside the ship and found what was essentially a cache of interstellar snacks, like beef jerky in the glove box, got stone sickness. It caused an explosion of calcium-like growth on the body, from the outside in. They were like living statues, skin like stone, muscles hardening, sucking tiny breaths of air until either their lungs or heart froze up, all a very slow and terrifyingly painful process.
No shit is right. And it turns out that what they caught wasn't some engineered virus bioweapon, but an alien version of the common cold that just hit us in a whole different way.
Yes, you see it all down here in these archives, son. Or at least, read about it, know what I mean? You are privy to all the dirt... from a safe distance.
What's that? Hmmm. The weirdest thing I actually saw with my own eyes?
Well, that would be back in eighty-two.
I'm sure you've heard all the spooky stories about some of our file closers. Scary is right. Psychopaths is what they were, both the men and the women we had cleaning up loose ends and silencing people.
JFK? Down the left corridor. Cage twenty-two. There are a dozen shelves filled with boxes. Look through them for yourself. It's all there, and yes, the cold-eyed son of a bitch who did the job was one of ours. Of course, that was before my time.
Have you heard of William Hill?
You have? See, the legend lives.
Elvis? Well... I suppose he looked a little like Elvis. A sinewy, mean as hell Elvis but, yes, in the face, there was a resemblance.
He was quite a beautiful man, and I'm sure he had women throwing themselves at him. Isn't it funny that I can do what I just did? Call another man beautiful? When I started with the Compound, there was no way I could ever talk in such a manner. But here we are in a whole new century, and my liberal, college-educated protégé didn't even bat an eye. Thank you, young man.
What's that? Oh, yes, I think part of the reason there were so many 'Elvis sightings' in the last few decades was all due to Mr. Hill. We would bring him in and he would escape. We'd track him down and bring him in again, and he would fly the coop. It was like a dance.
Excuse me... whew, that was quite the belch. I apologize. I guess I ate something that isn't sitting right with me.
Unfortunately I do not think the rumors of his death were exaggerated at all. We have not heard from him in many years now... But I was here one night, when William Hill got away. Nineteen eighty-one, it was.
And it was definitely the strangest thing I ever saw with my own two eyes. We taught him to kill, and as students go, he was at the top of his class.
Just a moment... no, I'm fine, young man. I just have a rather foul taste in my mouth.
Now let me set the scene.
Hill was in his twenties, then. A killing machine without a conscience. Since he could turn literally the most common objects into weapons, we put him in an empty cell on sub-level six, our own little prison ward.
He was raging like a madman. He had a tumor, no wait, not a tumor. Some sort of brain damage that made him act peculiar at the best of times. It's all in the records back there. You'll have plenty of time to read up on it.
It was the Fourth of July. We had a skeleton crew operating. Since Hill was such a high-risk entity almost everyone was called out to help secure him. So there I was, armed with my degree in Library Sciences, and a tranquilizer gun.
I felt like quite the macho fool, let me tell you.
Hill was walked down the corridor, a long-haired, sun-tanned young man in jeans and socks and a t-shirt. They had emptied his pockets and taken his shoes.
Eight of us, and by us I mean operatives who normally sat at a desk, were placed by the entrance to his cell, holding these big tranquilizer handguns.
Strict orders had come down from the top. Hill was to be incarcerated but not harmed. He was too valuable. Too many years had been invested in him, you see.
When he passed by me, Hill looked me in the eye and said, "You seem kind, and gentle. Stay out of my way and I won't have cause to kill you."
Scared? Oh yes, I was quite horrified, I assure you.
Hill was placed in his cell and the door was closed. Then he was ordered to strip down and hand his clothes through the bars. As I said, he could turn anything into a weapon, and the cell was bare. Just a cot, which was a length of Kevlar fused to the frame, and one of those stainless-steel toilet and sink combination units, as you see in prisons today, although I believe we developed the prototype.
Hill stripped down and... Don't think ill of me, young man, but he was lovely and frightening at the same time. His body was a map of suffering, scars upon scars, but his bare flesh was so...
Anyhow, enough of my lechery.
Hill was sealed in his cell. One of the guards in the ward laughed and spit on Hill. The young man looked at the guard and said, "You, I will kill." Then he turned his back on us, went to the toilet, and started to urinate.
Ooh, I feel... I apologize again. I thought I was going to break fearsome wind, and that would have been all too embarrassing.
We vacated the hall, leaving just the guards by Hill's cell. We went to the end of the hall to turn over our weapons and resume our duties.
I heard one of the guards say there was a sock, one of Hill's socks, lying on the floor in his cell. Another guard, the one Hill had threatened to kill, said he would retrieve the sock.
All the while Hill was peeing away, the merry splash of his urine echoing in the bare stone corridor.
Two guards stayed outside the cell as the other went inside, the door locked behind him for a moment. The two mocked the third, telling his to beware the naked unarmed man. The guard said, "I've got it," meaning the sock, and then he made a curious choking noise.
I looked back and saw the guard. His face was purple, and Hill was holding the ends of a white garrote he had wrapped around the guard's neck.
By the time the other two guards opened the cell door and pried Hill away from the stricken man, the guard was dead.
Hill's cell had been cleared of every possible weapon. Except a roll of toilet paper. While he was urinating, Hill had quickly unrolled the paper, folding and twisting it until he had a garrote.
To this day prisoners in the Compound have toilet paper given to them in stacks of separate sheets. Just in case.
After that, Hill was beaten down, severely, I might add.
Even as they were beating him he laughed and laughed. I've heard some say that Hill killed the guard with the toilet paper garrote as his way of flipping the bird at the Compound.
I went back to my desk, soon to be your desk, and a few days later I heard that Hill had escaped, yet again.
Ah, I thought you would like that tale... now... how odd.
I suddenly feel like I'm going to fall out of my chair...
I... oh my...
You put something in my coffee, didn't you?
So this is my retirement. The Compound's way of making sure I never breach the confidentiality oath I swore so many years ago.
You will do well here, young man.
I bear you no... ill will, and I thank you for your choice of poisons. You could have used something... that left me writhing in agony, but I feel only... sleepy. Exhausted.
Good luck, my protégé... and remember, your day will come soon enough, so... be prepared...
User Reviews
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2007-05-17 12:13:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
how'd I miss this?
Submitted by AshK (user info) at 2007-05-16 19:22:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by St_Jimmy (user info) at 2007-01-15 20:12:14 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Very nice, very nice.
Submitted by Merlina (user info) at 2006-09-28 06:27:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2006-09-28 05:53:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was a nice story.
Submitted by Life101 (user info) at 2006-09-28 00:12:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by TheUniter (user info) at 2006-08-29 02:05:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Predictable, but decent.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2006-08-28 23:06:36 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Did you know On the Road was first typed on a single roll of paper?
I bet you did.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-08-28 19:07:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by whysenheimer (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:12:01 (#)
Ranking: -2
This was banal, McRectum. You took cliched, hackneyed subject matter and infused it with nothing fresh or interesting.
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yeah Jack - look, he's right...you SHOULD be taking advice from a cock-sucking little pisher whose atrophied testicles prevent him from posting under his own name.
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2006-08-28 13:37:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
+2 for death by toilet paper garrote, and also for this:
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-08-28 11:45:26 (#)
Ranking: 2
Diversity Training? Not you too!
I want to get a t-shirt that says WHITE PEOPLE FOR JESUS and wear it to the next seminar. Then we'll see exactly how much diversity they want to embrace.
-------------
BAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-08-28 11:40:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-08-27 23:15:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-08-27 23:15:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
yeah my dad recommended it to me. it's big in the UK.
i've dvr'd a a few but i am working in calgary at the moment so only get back to houston every other weekend.
i'll try and watch them when things get a bit quieter.
Submitted by Kale (user info) at 2006-08-27 23:09:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-08-27 22:31:57 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Eureka? No. I like the idea, but the trailers looked shitty.
Best show I just watched: Sleeper Cell, a limited series out on DVD.
Best show I WISH I was watching: Life on Mars.
Lucky English bastards. I only have basic cable... gotta wait forever for the DVD.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-08-27 21:16:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
cool.
have you been watching eureka?
i like the premise but the characters in it are a bit bland. i'm talking about eureka not your post before you flip out.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-08-27 20:55:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by extacy_red (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:22:49 (#)
Ranking: 2
I like the compound.
Feel free to write more of them.
--
They are mentioned here...
http://www.ubersite.com/m/77500
And the story contains a few nods to the book in which these characters are featured.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-08-27 20:52:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:53:19 (#)
Ranking: 2
i like it but how was that the wierdest thing he'd ever seen when he had seen stone disease and alien craft etc
--
Most of the weird shit he knows about only through the records he maintains. The event described is the only one he actually witnessed. I should have stressed that point better.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-08-27 20:03:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I may end up reading this later, but for now the format bugs me too much.
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-08-27 19:50:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by AlwaysAnEagle (user info) at 2006-08-27 19:13:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Love!
BUY JACK'S BOOK, PEOPLE!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-08-27 19:01:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Hey, Wysenheinie, people think less of you than you do of Jack...
Everything you ever wanted to know about whysenheimer
User id: 27480
Registered on or around: 2006-06-19 17:31:59
# Messages posted: 3
# Reviews written: 391
# Times these posts have been reviewed : 64
# Hits: 986
Average rating of all messages: -1.39
=====
Bwahahahahahahhaahahahahahahaa!!
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:53:19 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i like it but how was that the wierdest thing he'd ever seen when he had seen stone disease and alien craft etc?
Submitted by SilentRenegade (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:43:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was awesome...write some more of those
Submitted by extacy_red (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:22:49 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I like the compound.
Feel free to write more of them.
Submitted by whysenheimer (user info) at 2006-08-27 18:12:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
This was banal, McRectum. You took cliched, hackneyed subject matter and infused it with nothing fresh or interesting.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-08-27 16:47:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
More Compound tales!!
I'm waiting for the sequel to MITU. . .