the last few weeks at work have been very, very interesting.
first off, let me explain to you where i work.
i work in a red brick 10 story office building on randolph street in greater chicago, in a polished oak furnished office, owned by the harvard school of public health. it is a government owned bureau, which is responsible for the public safety of the city. when people report a bomb threat, i am usually the first one on the scene, ready to assess any and all dangers, if any. usually there aren't.
so a few tuesdays ago, i was hanging out at work, working on a large, tasty steak and cheese sub i bought at marinos, and i realized there was a really funny smell. it smelt kind of like . . . if you could make the smell of battery acid smell sweet, that is what it smelt like. i left my office, and walked into the corridor.
"what in GODS name is that smell!?"
i walked into the main room, which is a large room with mostly file cabinets and about 50 desks full of secretary type people working, and i realized that a transparent steel sphere the size of basketball with a vile of red liquid was sitting near an oak support column.
"what the fuck, heh, what the hell is that?"
i turned around, and left the room, to find my superior and tell him to take a look at it.
BAM
it exploded in a huge fireball, which spread out in all directions. i watched as it knocked over chairs, and threw coworkers of mine 20 feet across the room against the wall, and i watched with horror as it came closer and closer, and it hit me, and i got thrown out of the building.
once i was outside, i had my full combat gear on. a tan jumpsuit with all these utility belts, and a machine gun against my back. i couldn't the last time they made me wear this ridiculous outfit.
we had to secure a perimeter around the area, and try and find who was responsible. i ended up in the fens (a green park with a nice river which runs through it, which is in the fenway area of boston), where i was to meet my new partner, who's code name, and all i knew him by, was "red echo".
he didn't show up though. a beautiful young woman did, however. she asked me questions about what had happened, and said she had grown up right in the area, and was very frightened by all of it. we chatted for a bit, i explained to her what harvard did, and explained how we were probably going to respond to the situation. i got a call on the radio to come back, so i told her, "business calls, nice meeting you!"
she smiled.
i returned to the building, where we were going to see if there were any casualties. inside was a horrific mess, about 60 people were dead, in and around the building. i was looking through the dead, and realized one of them was my partner, and i instantly yelled,
"FUCK FUCK FUCK"
my yells turned red as they echoed off of the buildings around me.
the next week, we set up shop in a small, one story store front building a block down the street. this was a clandestine operation we had set up here, under the facade of a bookstore. we had found out what the bomb was; a new bomb which had been developed the year prior by the united states government, containing the red compound of gratkitine, a highly explosive, and highly precise material. it was designed to be used by the cia, in order to quell political uprisings in south america.
this had given us all a particular amount of grief. how could a highly classified, highly lethal, and highly limited explosive, get in the hands of would be terrorists?? i just didn't get it.
i had been working very late one night last week. through my research on the internet, i had found out a lot of information on the man who designed the bomb . . . Dr. Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, born originally in ecuador, he was in the business of providing, and designing grenades, bombs, and other types of explosives and weapons, to be used in the effort to OVERTHROW governments.
i didn't get this at all. why was a political dissenter, suddenly making bombs for the US government? in fact, why was he making them to KILL DEMONSTRATORS AND FREEDOM FIGHTERS, which he, until very recently, supported?
i clicked on a recent newspaper article about him, but decided i had worked enough for one night, drank some vodka, and drifted into sleep.
that woman who i had met in the fens earlier that wake was in my dream. we were on a subway car together, and i kept trying to go over to her and talk to her. but each time i stood up, so would she, and enter another train car. i kept following her through the cars, until finally, she went through one of the train car doors, and when i followed, i realized it was the last train, and i fell violently through the door.
conciousness came fairly abruptly. it is strange how one second, you can be asleep, having the most fantastic dream of your life, and then the next second, you are suddenly awake, groggy eyed, sleepy, and clumsy. i got off of the couch, and went into our kitchen, and grabbed a bagel.
"what is that smell?" i thought, as i smelt a vaguely familiar stench of sweet battery acid....i dropped the bagel as soon as i realized what the smell was.
i ran into our living room area, and there, sitting on the coffee table, was a transparent metal sphere with a red vile inside of it. this thing was the size of a friggin refridgerator, and there was an hour left until it blew!
i looked at my computer screen; there were two headlines visible from where i was standing.
"ECUADORIAN SCIENTIST DEAD, AFTER APPARENT HEART ATTACK"
that didn't make sense, he was only 28!
FUCK. the cia were the ones who placed the bomb the first time, so that we wouldn't have been able to stop any future bombings, and now they have targetted us again, now that i stumbled on to what they were up to!
i raced, and i woke up the other people i was working with, graham, brett, justin and brian dennehy. we raced outside, and tried to evacuate the area.
we needed something to get everyone's attention with, so we went to the christmas tree shop which was up the road.
i went to their brass departement. so many different horns i had to choose from! they were all so expensive as well, i couldn't find one under 100 dollars!
i started walking back to the office, and noticed two people in uniform, with machine guns in hand, walking up the street, and scoping the office out. THE CIA WERE HERE. i ducked back behind the office as fast as i could, to think of what i could do. best as i could figure, the best course of action was to grab two trashcan lids, walk out in front of the building, and clap them together, and shout THERE IS A BOMB EVACUATE THE AREA!
i came back out from behind the building, and was walking towards the street, when a large, armored military vehicle pulled up directly infront of me, and out hopped a man with a machine gun.
i couldn't believe this . . . was this going to be the end?? no, this isn't real. it is not real.
he started shooting, and my body was littered with bullets. i felt one on my neck, it was so strange to feel, and pluck out a piece of metal from the flesh of my neck. i jumped onto the military truck, and kicked everyone off of it, when i felt the cold steel of a gun barrel press against my temple.
it was possible to avoid death when shot from a distance, but not at point blank range.
i heard the sound of a gun shot, and as suddenly as i had felt that gun barrle press against my head, it released. the man who had held the gun against my head a second ago, was slumped over, dead, shot in the chest. i looked behind me.
it was that beautiful woman i saw in thefens the week when it all started.
"red echo, i presume" i said with a smile. she responded with one, and jumped into the front passenger seat of the car. "red, we have to get the HELL out of here, and NOW"
i slammed on the gas peddle, and the truck went roaring ahead. i drove down boylston avenue as fast as i could, away from the location of the bomb, and once we were about a half a mile from it, i looked behind me.
everything seemed normal, and then all of a sudden a huge fireball, and all of the buildings, the cars, and people, were thrown into the sky.
we arrived in louisiana early the next morning, at around 5 am or so, and boarded our train, which was headed for darwin, australia, where we would be a safe distance from the control of the us government, which we realized was probably going to be gunning for us.
the train ride was going to be a long one . . . 78 hours long.
we had our own private booth on the train, and a waiter with a british accent came and served us orange juice and cornflakes, which was just what the doctor had ordered.
red echo -- i still did not know her true name -- was smiling at me, and i was smiling at her. suddenly, we embraced, looked at eachother in the eyes, and kissed.
and kissed, and kissed.
smiling, i fell asleep in her arms.
suddenly i woke up in my real bed, in my real life.
"damn, that was fucking wierd."
