404 Documents Sixteen: Shit Gets Real

(More 404.)

I arrived at the mall parking lot at the appointed time. There I saw all the usual suspects, plus a few faces I hadn’t seen before. Agent 777 smirked at me. “I can’t believe you agreed to this, man.”

“Me either,” I said quite sincerely. Why did I?

When the hood went over my head, I realized it was a bit late to be asking myself that question. There was no turning back. We so often make ourselves complicit in other’s designs, a passive bystander in our own lives. We’ll even let ourselves be tied to giant dollar signs, dressed like Santa Christ, apparently.

I wonder, when it’s all over, will I then use my passivity as an excuse for how Bradley “used” me? No, I have to accept my role in my life... somehow. Everything has been moving too fast to really grab life by the throat and live intentionally. Hands were moving over my arms and feet now, securing and testing the straps. 

“Hey, uh, guys?” I asked, my voice muffled under the hood. “Do you need to make it so tight? Does it matter?”

“Oh, it matters,” I heard a voice say.

Then another, “it’d be rude not to have a Christmas present for the Leviathan.”

I struggled in earnest then, but it was no use. I may as well resign myself to my fate, as always. It was never my decision, after all.

Then I felt myself being hoisted, the sound of the holiday float coming to life, that deep diesel grumble, the shrieks of what sounded like protesters - amongst that throng of voices I thought I could make out some familiar voices, as well - I heard what I imagined were the police, ordering the protesters to disperse through a megaphone.

Finally, the hood came off, leaving me face-to-face with a mob of screaming white suburban kids, all their slogans blurring together into a word salad nightmare: WE ARE THE 99%--SANTA JESUS DIED BECAUSE YOU TOUCH--OBAMA WAS NOT A BROWN SKINNED--BRING BACK CRYSTAL PEPSI--I SHAVED MY BALLS FOR THIS--HUNGRY, EAT A BANKER! 

“Christmas wonderland” blasted from the police loudspeakers, drowning out the protesters gibberish.
A bristling line of cops rolled into their midst as fake snow drifted down from above. Agent 506 winked at me from under his riot gear, right before laying out one of the protesters with his nightclub. Fists and sticks connected with human bodies, and once the chaos had reached its peak, even the protesters were brawling with one another. At that point, all the familiar faces slipped from the scene, leaving a bloody, shrieking mess for the real police, when they finally arrived in response to the second bomb threat that had been called in at this location in the past few months. And there I was, their Christmas lamb, wrapped with a bow.

404 Documents Fifteen: The Pieces Are In Place

(More 404.)

Bradley had a map laid out on an expansive table in the basement. All the Agents were in attendance. All had their shades on. Bradley was ignoring them, placing models on the map meticulously - robots, guns, tanks.

Agent 506 chortled.

“What’s funny?” Bradley asked.

“Nothing. It’s just. You’re playing with your dolls.”

“Just for that, you get trash detail,” Bradley said, throwing a folder at him. “These are your cover stories, your IDs, and the details of your mission. Don’t share notes with fellow classmates, kids, or I’ll have you eviscerated by a pack of silverback Gorillas.”

I opened up my folder. It had a drawing of Jesus Christ with a halo dressed like Santa, crucified to a dollar bill. Under it Bradley had writted, “CONGRADDDDULATIONS! You have the most important job of all. Bring the shroud of Turin. (Or a bath towel.)”

I stared at it, feeling a far away pressure in my temples.

“Alright, look. I don’t want this.” I tried to hand the folder back to him.

Bradley looked me square in the eyes. “There is a fork in the road. On one side, we have you, turning down this Op, and going home to your empty, illegally occupied apartment, to an empty bed. On the other, you get to see the sublime in action, the truly fucking sublime, when chaos shatters the foundations of civilization and truth peeks back at you through the cracks. What will it be?”

I don’t know why, but I took the folder.

“Good boy.”

Agent 506 scowled. “I don’t see anything in here that requires that fancy map you’ve got over there. And what the fuck are those miniatures supposed to be? Hoverboats and tanks?”

Bradley shrugged. “It’s game night. I needed a cover for our meeting. Speaking of, this meeting never happened. Make sure to take some Mountain Dew before you leave.”

404 Documents elevent: The Dream #1

(More 404.) 


"We don't die, it's much worse: we vanish. In other words, we never were. There is no reality." Petr Král

As I said, everything was already starting to change for me. These things begin little by little. It seems that all at once there is an audible snap and your life is wholly different. But when we look back we can see that it was actually a long time coming. It seemed to begin with my dreams that night.

I was on a giant battleship, which was - I think - steaming toward the US capitol. I’m not sure how, but in some way I understood that our mission was a last ditch effort to save the American Dream. Crew were carrying missiles back and forth through the hull. Screams, smoke, flashing lights. Amidst the commotion, I inquired what they were planning on doing with those, (the were sidewinders, air-to-air, we had no planes onboard, what the hell good were they?)
One of the crew awkwardly dropped one and an auto-door slammed shut on it with a clink.

Everything seemed to stop. The rocking of the boat. The yelling and carrying on of the crew. Even the sloshing of the waves below deck. All our eyes went toward thousands of pounds of munitions, rolling around on the floor as the doors opened and slammed shut again. And then the gut-wracking moment. There was a sucking oomph and metal and bodies became high velocity shrapnel themselves, shearing people like they were little more than paper cut-out dolls. I was lying on the ground and I wondered when this was, was this world war 3? Was this the Queen Mary? Was I alive? What the hell was going on?

I thought I was waking up for the first time, at that moment, but of course I was neither awake nor aware. But it seemed that I was. And if things can seem so true and yet be complete lies, then what can we trust, really?