Over the next few weeks I'll share with you some of my Short Stories I've written over the past few months/years. There's a special format I followed to write them. I take many random photos with my phone. Since I had my N70 all those years ago, and I've built up quite an extensive collection of random pics over the years. I'd take one of these pictures, and JUST START WRITING about it, what, in my mind, I thought could have been the scenario, what led to, and what happened before/after that picture was taken, what caused that moment in time to happen! Freestyling, if you will, with short story writing. The stuff I come up with = RANDOM.
So, for the next few weeks, I'll make Tuesday; Short Story day :) ENJOY!
#2: The Wall
To the unknowing observer, this must have been
a truly arcane sight. The authorities have a vague suspicion, but only those
who were part of it know the happenings of the night before, the audacious
swoop, the astuteness of the preparation, the shrewdness of their escape, a
clandestine operation, but the damage dealt not so surreptitious though. . .
It’s 3am and we
were on schedule, just a few kilometers away from the Medical Research Council.
We knew they would still be there. But they didn’t know that we knew about
them. We’ve been watching them. Dr Alberts and Prof MacIntyre were developing
something. Working tirelessly, day in, day out, sleepless night after sleepless
night, living like zombies, all in the name of good. They were making something
unobtrusive. Something noble. That would revolutionize the way man existed. We
could NOT have that. They had to be stopped. This discovery they’ve made could,
and probably will, change the world forever.
What they’ve done
is create the world’s strongest adhesive. And when I say adhesive, I don't mean
super glue. No. Just a drop could keep a half ton of metal, two pieces,
attached to one another, infinitely. This adhesive is yet to fail in the tests
and trials that they have done. It will make construction of anything
substantially cheaper, from appliances, to cars to houses to massive
skyscrapers, all these productions costs would be slashed to prices that seem
infinitesimal to what they are now. And we won’t have that. WE want that power.
Unlike most organizations, our mandate is not just to steal or fraud or petty
things like that. We want control. Absolute. Control. Control is money. And
money is power. With this herculean adhesive and the recipe to make it in our
grasp, we will start to gain control by taking over property development,
construction, power-generation, until everything uses our adhesive, and when
that happens, we ask for tax on it, and then we will take over. . .anyone who
would denounce our movement, would be ended.
It's 03:26, there
was security abound at the main entrance, 5 armed guards, in suits, but with
kevlar vests hidden beneath them. Cameras hidden in every nook and cranny in
every shape and size. Electric fences, all over, with enough power to
electrocute a pack of elephants into cinder. So we had to make alternative arrangements.
We drove past the entrance about 500 meters down. We could use a helicopter,
but where’s the stealth in that? We lined up a ramp so that the thick pavement
can’t dent our pre-prepared Hummer, or impede it’s path, or break it’s speed.
We placed an old mattress on the wall, to smother the impact, to silence it,
and to make it easier for our 3 ton, fully-titanium, imperishable beast. De
Jong was behind the wheel. 20 years of in-field training would suffice for this
feat. So what, he just needs to ram his hummer into a wall? That’s easy!
No.
It’s not.
He only has a
short, tricky run-up, and a minimal amount of nitrous-oxide that needs to be
released at just the right time, he needs to turn sharply, from the main road
into the ramp and slap bang into and through the wall, without ruining the
electric fencing above it, otherwise the alarm would go off, all this, while
bearing the knowledge that his baby son is in the hospital with hand, foot, and
mouth disease and his daughter is 3 months pregnant with a girl who will be
named after his deceased wife, Petro, who commited suicide after finding out
about his secret life of lies and other women. The deceit had caught up with
him in the most unfortunate of ways, but what could he do, this was his job, no,
this was more than a job, it was destiny. But all that was of no relevance for
him now. All that mattered was the task that lay ahead. He had to break this
wall. Cleanly.
In less than five
seconds of precise driving acumen, De Jong rammed into the wall after a wicked
turn, adorned by the glittering colours of the Nos smoke, hit the mattress and
flat-out pulverized the wall, leaving the way for the speedsters to do their
thing.
The speedsters
were super athletes, chemically-enhanced so that their physical fitness, speed
and endurance surpasses any other
regular human being. Scouted straight out of school and trained in the ways of
stealth espionage, these animal like creatures have the agility, speed and
reflexes of cheetahs, but unlike cheetahs, can keep running, and running, and
running...
They now had
exactly 5 minutes to run across a one kilometer long stretch of lush field to
get to the laboratory. All they needed to do was steal the formula for the
adhesive. And one sample. That’s it.
Or was it?
In the Hummer,
there was a security breach. An entourage of cars was making their way towards
our position. One or two cars would be understandable. 3:30 on a Monday night?
Could be raucous, rancid youth, returning home from shit-faced Mondays, but
these were 6 cars. They were CSAs Crocodile Skull Agents. . .
The Crocodile
Skull were the most secret of South African intelligence organizations,
unbeknownst to nearly everybody everywhere, not the police, not the government,
not even the South African Secret Service knows about them. They are at the
forefront of protecting the country against everything malignant and evil, some
in our organization even claim that they've stumbled upon intelligence that
they're working on cures for killer diseases, that are years ahead of global
research.
CSA were on to us.
Turns out that the good doctors were part of Crocodile Skull Agency. Chris
Petersen ratted us out. Matter fact, he was working for them the whole time. He
infiltrated the ranks of our organization, ingratiated himself with the
relevant leaders, for a whole six months, and tonight, just as we were about to
launch our offensive, the culmination of many months of research, he tried to
collapse it, he tried to stop us from realizing our vision. . .
He was duly shot
in the back of the head. Murdered in cold blood. But in this organization risks
have to be taken to keep what we are doing secret. And to be exposed now would
be a monumental obstruction.
Petersen had left
us a farewell gift. He had a nano-chip in his watch. If his pulse stopped, CSA
would immediately be notified on his positional co-ordinates, also where all
his belongings were. Our bullet-proof vests were his creations; we thought he
was the best thing since rum and coke. We were incorrect. They now knew where
all of us were.
Now with a revised
deadline of 3 minutes our speedsters had their work cut out for them. They were
still trying to hack into the alarm system of the laboratory when they heard
about our updated mission status. But Donald and Williams were masters at what
they do. They deciphered the code of the alarm and that of the safe, housing
the samples and the formula, rather quickly, immobilizing the good doctors with
some long-distance tazer action.
Our back-up cars
had to leave to make the scene less conspicuous, the Hummer as well, leaving
only the turbo-charged Corsa. A clever ploy to mask our intentions. A souped up
Corsa is common-place at drags and could pass as those spoiled, impish youths
wasting away their parents’ hard-earned money on car-parts, body-kits and sound
systems.
As the CSAs arrive
our Corsa leaves the scene, bulleting out of that hole in the wall like an
infant Chuck Norris round-house kicking his way out of his mother’s womb and
sped off into the suburbs to hide away in our well hidden, civilian-like
espionage house, where we analyzed our efforts for the night in the underground
HQ.
Chris might have
thought he had 1-upped us, by siphoning all our data onto his watch up and till
the last moment of his life, and now that they knew he was dead, they uploaded
the data he collected to their systems for analysis of all our operations,
projects and members. But. Unfortunately. This company trusted no-one. Any data
or applications from our systems and archives are programmed to automatically
evolve into a malicious Trojan virus when it finds itself on any operating
system other than ours, then it multiplies into every folder on their system,
and creates an .exe file that, when opened, closes all other windows and fills
the screen with our majestic, regal trademark: bubbles. Thousands of bubbles.
That have to be popped until any other operation can be performed.
This usually fries
the CPU and crashes the hard drive irrevocably, triggering a sequence of
reactions inside the computer's box, causing it to explode.
The next time you see a bubble, you will
remember it’s power, and our organization, the Bubble Squad.
This photo was taken
at 06:34 on the 19th of November 2008. They say a picture speaks a thousand
words, this one spoke 1490 words.
© Spenelo 2012
Look out for the next story, coming next Tuesday :)
