Report: Operation HOI POLLOI - Part Three
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A hospital bed. Lt. Fields awakens, Special Agent Gaultier in the bed next to his. No sign of Special Agent Copeland. A surgeon enters, consulting a chart on a clipboard. He tells Lt. Fields they are in Modesto, California. He asks Lt. Fields benign questions about his injuries, about the blast and ensuing fire that consumed the fortified cabin of the Bear Flag Republic's leader, Ronald Pringle. Fields asks after the condition of his cohort. They assure him all his fine, him and Gaultier sustained only superficial burns and injuries, Copeland was injured by shrapnel and has required surgery, which she is undergoing presently. It’s strange, it should hurt a lot more than it does, or he should at least feel that warm haze of morphine, but no. He feels fine.
Trying to make conversation, and noting the doctor’s nametag says “Kipling,” and offhandedly mentions there being “no discharge in the war.” The Doctor is baffled by this, and Lt. Fields has to explain the joke. That’s not what’s odd. What’s odd is when Dr. Kipling mentions preferring Tolstoy before trying to correct himself and promptly being called away by the intercom. In haste, he leaves a chart on a nearby stool.
Fields picks it up and blinks. The chart is written in cyrillic, and as he thumbs through the pages, he sees a symbol he recognizes.
The GRU. Well that’s not right.
He pulls himself from his bed and gets Gaultier up. They see a bed in the same room as them and the sounds of a surgical team at work. They pull aside the curtains and see a team of surgeons at work - except the skin of their faces is shiny and seamless like plastic, their eyes vacant and unmoving... and thin metal cords attached at the hands ending in tracks in the ceiling. The mannequin surgeons stop and turn to face Fields and Gaultier, as they do, they can see it isn't their ally, Copeland, on the table, but rather the dissected carcass of a pig, a portable television jammed into the bloody mess of its open ribcage playing episodes of ER. They back away slowly and close the curtain and begin to plan their escape. They're not in Modesto, they must still be in the Night World they remember journeying into. This is preferable to the possibility that this nightmare future of 2038 is what’s awaiting them in 38 years. They need to figure out where they are and how to get home, but first, they need to find Copeland. As they leave, several of the surgeon mannequins levitate up from the bed and glide smoothly through a hole in the ceiling tiles, while Gaultier picks the lock to their room, Fields sticks his head through the hole to see what's inside. He's greeted by a dark but enormous chamber with a vaulted ceiling. The distant sound of artillery, music, laughter and thunderous applause can be heard somewhere way out there in the dark. An old, authoritative male voice calls out.
"Not your cue yet, VICTOR".
Fields slowly lowers himself back into the room just as Gaultier finishes prying open the lock.
"Good man".
They enter a deserted hospital hallway, lined with gurneys and empty ammunition boxes covered in cyrillic and marked with a double headed imperial eagle. The pair don’t have to go far before hearing the sounds of a one sided interrogation. Inside sits a man dressed in tweed asking a series of questions to a clearly unconscious Special Agent Copeland, strapped to a chair with electrodes on her head. Fields sneaks in and puts the interrogator in a chokehold, demanding answers.
“I…I’m just an old man. The Russians told me to ask her these questions…They’ve got virtually no English speakers on purpose, something about a ‘linguistic air gap.’ I’m just doing what I’m told I swear!”
Gaultier and Fields are able to free Copeland just in time for two Russians to enter the room. They hold the three at gunpoint, yelling at them in Russian. A third Russian, clad in a gas mask and a hazmat suit, enters the room and looks to the two guards, asking them questions in Russian. Finally, he looks at the group. He pauses, tilts his head, then speaks to them in English.
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| "Alchemist", GRU Officer (?) |
"Oh, they didn't tell me it was you". This confuses the Agents, as well as the Russians. For whatever reason, the comment makes them panic, and his guards turn to point their weapons at the masked officer, but not before he produces a revolver and shoots both of them dead.
"I imagine you're very confused," he says to them calmly.
"Yes," Gaultier replies.
"You get used to it,” he pauses for a moment, “actually no, you don’t. It just gets worse. Do you not remember me?". They tell him no and after a moment of contemplation, he concludes "Ah, then this must be before. No matter. Then it comes to you. They’re calling it a ‘neuro-linguistic’ weapon,” he laughs ruefully, “,they believe it's under their control as long as they quarantine the English language. I’m the only one they trusted to be a sanctioned English speaker. They’re reckless fool gambling with reality. You already know what you must do. Kill Allen Bhrunt and stop his madness."
"Naturally"
"We will meet again. When we do, you must identify me by my codename, ALCHEMIST, that will tell me who you are." Before the agents can demand any further answers from him. The Russian removes his gasmask, then places the revolver against his temple and fires, killing himself instantly. The agents stand surrounded by the dead, dumbfounded for a moment before gathering the Russian's weapons, gear, and clothes. They ask the interrogator where they are and what's happening. The interrogator goes to open his mouth, but what comes out is not an answer.
"Along the shore the cloud waves break,The twin suns sink behind the lake-" he clasps his hands over his mouth, confused and horrified. Then tries again. "I-I... The shadows lengthen-", Fields is leveling Alchemists' revolver at the interrogator. "In Carcosa" BANG. The interrogator stiffens, then slumps over dead.
True to Agent VICTOR's appraisal, V-Cell was not in Modesto. Exploring the building they were kept in, they discover that they were being held at the UC Davis medical centre in Southern Sacramento, which had been fortified by the Imperial Russian military, though seemingly in the late stages of evacuation. The sound of battle and tanks moving out can be heard. Looking through a gap in the barricaded windows they see the entire campus covered in some kind of metal netting for reasons VICTOR is at a lost for. They find their clothes and effects, which they collect, though VICTOR is initially confused as to why his copy of the King in Yellow has now been replaced by a latin version with an inscription that reads "Victor C. 's copy". They find a map in the triage bay of the city of Sacramento, complete with what seemed like battle plans and areas-of-interest.
They identify, as before, the fortifications at MacLellan airport as the area that Bhrunt is likely being kept by the Russian military, and where Cassilda's Song is likely being broadcast from. After all, he was working at the attached museum. They arm themselves and prepare to leave, but as they do, a voice comes from behind them.
"Oh, Yo, Victor, hold on." They turn to see a man in his 30s in a hoodie with an expensive-looking film camera. "We had another mix-up with the scripts. Here." The man gives VICTOR a film script, the title reads "A Song Before Travel". A note in handwriting reads "A. Victor's Copy". He swaps the script for Victor C.’s Latin King in Yellow then says "Okay, just like before, just improvise dialogue and do what comes natural. Ready when you are", he then turns on the camera and watches them. VICTOR accepts this at face value, the other agents are too busy finding their gear and loading up to even notice the interaction.
The Night World of California is a nightmarish place. A diseased and bloodied vision of California in the year 2038. Vast swaths of suburban homes have been converted into landscapes of shattered tile and splintered wood. The air tastes like ozone and ash, the state of their comms shows VICTOR that a truly ungodly amount of electronic warfare is being waged across the spectra of Sacramento.
The agents learn that the United States devolved into civil war sometime in the 2020s, and then again in the 2030s. In California, two foreign powers have deployed troops to "help" their sides in the Third American Civil War. The Imperial Russian Military Expedition controls much of Northern California, Oregon, and Washington. The Tsan-Chanese Humanitarian Mission has made their beachheads in San Francisco and in Baja, and has been working its way North towards Sacramento with the help of their local collaborators, the remnants of the "American Constitutionalist Government" (which, by all accounts, seems more a roving gang of brigands in futuristic military gear than any sort of real military force, let alone "government"). As they travel, they take time to review VICTOR's script, revealing that it contains instructions for how to find Bhrunt, telling them to:
Find The Writer in the trailer
Then on to the Temple.
Make a deal with the merchant.
Befriend the Anarchist.
Discover the dead Mormons.
Listen to Shulgin's scheme
Raid the Stanford House
Kill Captain Baines
Follow Shulgin to the Checkpoint
Take advantage of the chaos
Travelling through the ruins of Sacramento gives V-Cell a glimpse of future warfare. The reason for the netting is made quickly apparent when an ugly, angular truck filled with Russian comes barreling down a street toward the abandoned base. It’s being chased by a horde of tiny helicopters, attempting to dive bomb the truck. One strikes true, killing them all save for one soldier who is thrown, legless, from the explosion. A single, small drone hovers above the weeping soldier, he’s begging it for mercy. It holds position for what feels like eternity, making to move away before quickly hovering back over and dropping a grenade on the man whose relief turns to terror which turns to nothing.
Drone Warfare, from what V-cell deduces, is an extreme and hectic evolution of air-supremacy centered warfare tactics of the 90s and 2000s. Efforts are made to avoid moving above ground, with fire teams preferring to move through storm trains, covered trenches, and "rat holes". Fortifications made by burrowing through neighboring buildings and covering the connecting "tunnels". Any critical road way or building has metal netting erected around it to intercept the swarms of kamikaze drones.
Moving east they pass through a suburb,houses appear to be covered in some massive, glittering spider’s web. On closer inspection,the buildings have been draped in thin, fiber optic cables, which scavengers gather in spools to sell back to other militaries. All sides are deploying a vast array of radio jamming and interception techniques that the only reliable way to remotely pilot a drone at long range is to have it tethered. VICTOR takes the hint and gathers a bundle of his own for safekeeping.
In one home, the agents pass through, but pause when they see an American atomic family gathering around to watch the 65th superbowl. The family's faces are caked in dust, some with bruises or bleeding gashes on the arms or heads which they seem not to acknowledge. Their TV is enormous and thin, unlike anything V-Cell has ever seen. It's down to the Cleveland Browns and the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s not a rerun, but by VICTOR’s rough calculation this should be the 72nd.
A political advertisement interrupts the game from the "Government of National Salvation", warning Americans about the threat of superstitious Imperial Russian brutes, godless Sinofascist cannibal Tsan-Chan, cowardly secessionists, religious fanatics, murderous communists, Neo-Nazi satanists, and the traitorous seditionists of the so-called "Constitutionalist Government”. Accompanying images of unbelievable brutality flash across the screen at a break neck speed, to which not even the children watching react. It assures them that The Republic will prevail, and that America's great democracy will triumph once again. A mother kisses her child’s forehead and says, “see, they’re coming to save us,” before the entire family rises to sing the national anthem along with the end of the ad. V-Cell leaves.
They pass through wartorn Sacramento, witnessing looting by Constitutionalist brigands and other horrors. They climb onto the collapsed ruins of I-99, as per the script's instructions, and witness a Constitutionalist fireteam ambushed and destroyed by an apparition of the STATIC team, who disappear into a seemingly intact winnebago nearby. V-Cell cautiously follows and discovers the Winnebago's interior to be a hotel room. A moustached man, drawn and pale, sits on the bed tacking away on a typewriter. "Cassandra, Camilla, Cameron, Jesus Jaycy think." he looks to them, "Close the door, damn it". V-Cell searches the room as he frets over his work. No sign of the STATIC team. "Cassie, Canary, Claire... Fuck".
"What about Clarissa?" Suggests VERDANCE. He looks at her and sneers. "Stick to your day job, doll. Goddamnit. One of you fetch my kit from the bathroom." VICTOR looks and finds a satchel with a pouch of heroin and the tools to administer it. He places it on the bed just as WAXER suggests "Cassilda?". The writer pauses. "Cassilda... Cassilda", he seems to chew on the name, tasting it, testing its rhythm. "Yes, Cassilda, Yes!". He types it down, then looks at the page, reviewing his work. "Brilliant, fuck, brilliant!". They hear the door unlatch itself revealing a partly ruined minimalist apartment hallway. "See yourselves out". They do, VERDANCE pocketing the heroin on her way out.
They exit onto Riverside boulevard, and, following the script's directions, head South. They witness yet more horrors, including a riot and a summary execution of Constitutionalists by Imperial Russians to the sound of God Save the Tsar over a damaged speaker and the applause of a crowd of American civilians. It dawns on them what "The Temple" is as they approach the B'Nai Israel Synagogue, the very temple that the Karotechia attacked at the start of this mess. The temple is a shadow of its old self, with prostitutes, alcohol, and wares being sold on its steps and in the yard around it, the bazaar spilling through the shattered doors of the synagogue into its inner chambers, all run by deserters from each of the three armies. V-Cell approaches, VICTOR contemplating the Cleansing of the Temple at Jerusalem.
Outside, Shulgin spirits V-Cell away as a Tsan-Chanese patrol arrives to crackdown on the "illegal social gathering" of wounded, sick, and dying that have gathered outside the temple. He brings them to a storm drain and introduces them to Krystal Hsien, a middle aged anarchist, smuggler and drone-operator who promises to take them to the Cauldron.
V-Cell does not comment on the “Death 2 Amerikkka” message tattooed on her left cheek. They discuss their "mark" and reveal to Shulgin and Krystal that it's Allen Bhrunt, the man on the Russian radio station broadcasting the Song of Cassilda. They blanch at the notion of such a deep infiltration into Russian territory, but are eventually convinced by the promise of collecting the enormous bounty on Bhrunt's head and the specificity of their plan (really the directions of the script). They progress North towards the cauldron.
Further up in the drains they encounter dead soldiers with advanced covert operations equipment. Shulgin identifies them as "Nauvoo Rangers", elite special forces of the Mormon separatist government in Utah who are allied with the Russians, and despite the use of the Deseret alphabet, deduces from their documents that they were hunting Cassandra Baines, a Constitutionalist army officer wanted by Russian military intelligence. It also just so happens that Baines looks almost identical to Agent VERDANCE.
Although the plan is slapdash, Shulgin devises a scheme to get them behind Russian lines. VERDANCE will disguise herself as Baines, VICTOR and WAXER as Nauvoo Rangers, Krystal as a Russian volunteer, and Shulgin will go as himself (he'll devise a clever excuse to explain away his "desertion". They'll be there to turn over Baines to the GRU, which will let them get all the way to MacLellan Airport and the fortifications there, which will let them get them close to Bhrunt. First, they'll have to find and kill Casssandra Baines.
Following the intelligence given to the dead mormons, they travel towards Stanford Mansion. On the way, they fight an alien horror called a "Silent One", evidently the creature that slaughtered the Nauvoo Rangers. They defeat it and make their way to the surface entrance as close to the Stanford Mansion as possible.
The cacophony of downtown Sacramento is almost unbearable. The stench of ozone, cordite, and blood is overwhelming. The air itself seems to vibrate, and not just from the constant chatter of gunfire, explosions, and whirring drones. Everything seems to be vibrating to some degree, and Krystal offhandedly mentions this is where the majority of the sonic and microwave weapons are being used.
The raid, as expected in the horrible world infected by the King in Yellow, devolves into surreality and slaughter. Although they take some grievous injuries, V-Cell is able to fight their way through the house in pursuit of Baines, who is ambushed by the baffling emergence from the mist of three Klansmen in full regalia on horseback, armed with Winchester rifles and Confederate cavalry sabres. After dispatching the interlopers, VICTOR levels his rifles and blows the head off an injured and confused Captain Baines.
As the dust clears and Shulgin treats Gaultier’s wounds, V-Cell notices that Krystal seemed to slip away. Shulgin suggests she probably got nerves after the fight. She did mention not willing to risk “ending up in another camp,” early on. While examining Baines ID cards, it appears she was an Internal Stability agent and part of something called the Department of Homeland Security, the air becomes humid and suddenly smells richly of linseed oil. Soon Stanford Mansion is ablaze, burning just like the MacAllister building in New Orleans did.
VERDANCE dons Baine's uniform and, in disguise, they take her to the Imperial Russian lines. Almost immediately they encounter a man in a suit and fedora taking pictures of the burning mansion with an analog camera. He smiles and introduces himself as Ralph Whithers, foreign correspondent for El Pais. Despite his archaic attire and camera, his credentials are all 2038 standard. Special Agent Gualtier freezes when she hears the name, but at least the orphan of BFR shooter Earl Withers seems to have found a successful career in journalism.
After allowing for a few posed photos, the part ways and V-Cell finds a blockade flying the Imperial Russian and Canadian flags, as well as what VICTOR is able to identify as the Shi’a Banner of Imam Ali. Even more baffling than the presence of Islamic militants in a Russian army (in the year 2000 Russia was in the midst of a brutal counter insurgency with muslim separatists in Chechnya) but all the perfectly uniformed and equipped “Canadian” soldiers only speak Russian. Shulgin is too busy negotiating with the commander to even think to explain.
After a tense and circuitous journey including multiple vehicle transfers (briefly including a miniature submarine in the river) the team finally arrives at MacLellan where they take Baines to be processed by the GRU. Shulgin seems suddenly less confident in his plan, but V-Cell assures him that "all will go well". Sure enough, as they're bringing "Baines" into the building, an artillery strike hits the fortified airport, though they quickly learn its no conventional artillery, but rather Unfolders, the enormous, plasticky horrors deployed by Tsan-Chan, that have been deployed via artillery, and are now unspooling themselves and bubbling across the fortifications, enveloping terrified Russian troops and crushing the blood from them like oranges. V-Cell takes advantage of the situation and makes a break towards the broadcasting room, giving VERDANCE a chance to change quickly out of her disguise.
Finally, they encounter the broadcast room and kick the door in. In a studio, they see Allen Bhrunt overseeing a live recording of "Cassilda's Song" by a trio of dusty, bloodied singers in an opposite booth. He looks to the agents. "Oh, thank god". VICTOR levels his pistol and fires. White light consumes them.
In a hospital room in Modesto, the agents stir from their rest and are greeted by Agent VIRGIL. He assures them that the situation in California has been contained, and the BFR are being dismantled as they speak. Ronald Pringle is dead, and later investigation by the FBI discovered the corpse of Allen Bhrunt under the floorboards in his house. How he got there is anyone's guess. What's important is that the situation's been salvaged, he thanks the agents and stands them down, then leaves to take a phone call.
As he leaves the room, the cameraman comes back and gives back to VICTOR his book "No, you were right the first time, this is yours". He then leaves.
The trio of agents sit in their hospital room, baffled at what's happening. It's only VICTOR who notices the window-washer. As he moves his squeegee across the window, he briefly forms the Yellow Sign, before squeegeeing it clean, and lowering his platform to the window below.
Afterword
Anways, for that reason, I gave this report to him to proofread and correct, seeing that he probably remembered a lot more of the details than I did. Check out his blog.
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