[Fiction] Life's a Bitch

[Machina]

21 Nov, 2014

Static. Static for hours, like the incessant hissing of an electronic snake. Darkness like the inside of a fist. And a smell like a brewery. It'd been a couple days since Gerad Donighal, codename Machina, had returned from Ulysses Bailey's little summer camp in the hills, and he had spent the majority of his time since getting good and shitfaced. He didn't sleep anymore, but if he really tried hard, he could drink enough straight gin, whisky, or bourbon to persuade his body to surrender and pass out, and it was worth the three or four hundred greenbacks it cost him to get a little rest and forget how fucking stupid everyone in the world who wasn't him was.

Until he woke up again, anyway.

The static of the screen broke like a surge, and replaced itself with the image of a stern, sober man in a business suit and sunglasses. It spoke to him as if expecting a reply, "Agent Machina?"

A figure at the terminal the screen was set into stirred slightly, ash from a long-lit cigarette dancing from the tip like a Thai stripper and flitting down to the false-wood formica countertop. A half-filled bottle of brown sunshine tumbled out of the other hand as it groped forward to fumble at the controls that would make the disturbance cease, but it found no purchase.

The figure became visibly irritated, as if it was privy to the lack of activity on the other side of the screen. "Agent Machina!", it shouted.

A single eyelid opened a fraction of an inch, and behind it, a blue circle peered from a white circle shot with so many red veins it looked like it should have been hanging from somebody's tanenbaum. The figure at the desk groaned angrily, then mumbled out, "Fuck off. 'Agent' Machina's dead. You pricks killed him."

The man in the window regained his composure, evidently pleased with himself. "You should know better, Agent Machina. Termination of your employment with the agency doesn't mean we've finished with you. You didn't quit", and the son of a bitch spoke like he really was just addressing an employee, "we provisionally terminated your services until such a time, if ever, as we had need of them. That time has come."

Machina was angry enough to chew bullets and spit the bastard to death. Placing his palms firmly on the countertop in front of him to make a show of raising up out his seat, he crouched over the console, staring not at the screen, but at the tiny camera above it. His eyes were bolted wide and no less bloodshot for it, and the anger that characterized his waking moments returned to his features quicker than Slattern could open her legs for Divis Mal. "Wrong, pissant." He wasn't arguing. An argument implied an equality of participants. What the embittered nova was about to do to this man was more akin to a verbal form of prison rape. "I know the agency likes to think they've got a tight leash on all of their garbage personnel who got a little too close to ugly for them to keep their panties dry about it. Let me educate you otherwise." Machina turned briefly to an adjoining console, typing in several lightning-fast keystrokes with one hand while lighting a Lucky coffin nail with the other. He looked at the screen for a moment, absently scratched the four days of stubble growth on his chin, exhaled a jet of smoke, and without looking back, concluded "Your name is Ian vanHoten, but that isn't the name on your birth certificate. It's Hilary, actually, 'Ian' was the name of a character on a teevee show you liked as a kid. You're thirty-seven years old, divorced, two children. Your wife left you because you work too much and haven't had an erection - or been bothered to get one - in about three years. Your son is an Honors Student at Garfield Middle School - I know that because it says so on the bumper of your Jeep Liberty '12, plate number ZW4 86F - and your daughter is on the cheerleading squad, but only because she lets the coach touch her. You graduated ROTC in 2001, fourth in your class at Penn State, made it up to short Colonel before getting tapped to join the agency in 2008. You enjoy classical music, your favorite film is 'Casablanca' and you have a formidable collection of photos of your neighbor's two boys on your hard drive." He inhaled from his cigarette again, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth to the camera near him. "Oh yeah. And you had eggs benedict for breakfast this morning."

Machina turned back to the monitor. The shifty little monkey in the business suit looked about two feet tall, and that suit seemed about three sizes too big. His sunglasses hung precariously from the bridge of his nose like a cartoon of shock, and he was sweating fifty-cal bullets. "Let me make something clear to you", the man at the desk addressed the camera once again. "You exist because I allow it, motherfucker, not the other way around. Now fuck off." With a flick of his beefy mitt, he clicked the monitor screen off, smoked his only friend down to the filter, then lit another, glowering at the screen. "Fuckers."

[Machina]

It took the bastards five hours to get around to bothering him again. Grimly resigning himself to sobriety, he got up and started to work on his latest inventive masterpiece, a moisture-reducing form of high concentrate sodium chloride blacktop that was naturally resistant to snow, ice and rain and could be sprayed on at a rate of about one square yard per minute. The thing would never see the light of day, and Gerad knew it, but solving these problems gave him something constructive to do, and hey, fuck it, he figured, maybe one of these days those tight-assed simian retards at Utopia R&D would accidentally let one slip through the net. He had to admit it, he was getting tired of the letters, the subpoenas, the Cease & Desist orders, the outright threats. "Too far, too fast", they told him. "The world isn't ready for it." "Widespread panic." "Collapse the economy." "Sir, there's no need to use such language, and I'll thank you to not refer to my mother in such terms." Same shitty song and dance routine every time, and Machina didn't even want the tickets, to begin with. Well, fuck 'em, right? They don't want him to save the world? He'll keep all the coolest toys in existence all to himself.

The brute's mind sung out a symphony of curses to the powers-that-be as his lips silently mouthed "Fuckin' motherfuckers...fuckin' douchebag sons-a-bitches short-sighted simian fuckin' cowards..." over and over again past gritted teeth that held his cancer stick in his mug. And while he did that, he operated a spraygun containing a chemical compound that would make driving in 52.9% of the world about 98.3% easier for an average of 36.1% of the year at 20.7% of the current price, and the world would never know it.

Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades' began to play from his shirt pocket. The fella cringed slightly. Nobody he wanted to talk to ever called him. With a grunt, he turned off the valve, dropped his sprayer like he had fifty of them, removed his goggles, produced a small, black phone from his pocket and opened it up. The area code was from Washington. Fuck's sake, not again.

"What is it you cocksuckers want from me this time?"

"Gerad? Hey, fucker, how's it hangin'?" The voice on the other end belonged to an old friend, a skinny little scrapper of a bastard who was all business and good spirits and figured himself a better spy than James Bond. He probably was.

"Alex", he returned.

"Fang."

"Fag. What do the hell do you want? The company enlisting my old partners to try and drag me back? Tell 'em they're barking up the wrong fuckin' tree. They burned that bridge with me. They napalmed the bridge. The sent in ground troops and light infantry to neutralize the civilian population. They salted the earth so nothing would ever grow there, again."

A light chuckle came from the other end, all expensive clove cigarettes from Pakistan, cheap vodka from Russia and even cheaper women from Tokyo. "That's what I told them, Gerad. But they were rather insistant, and handed down the order to me as they figured you'd be less likely to hang up on me immediately."

Machina made a point of exhaling his last drag so Alexander could hear him. "They were wrong."

There was a moment of silence. "Gerad? ... ... ... ... Fuck. Goddammit, Gerad."

"Just fucking with you, you fucking girl. But tell the brass to fuck off, willya? I'm not their nigger anymore."

Alex was serious now, stern, but no less poised. "Gerad. They need you. We need you."

There was so much silence you wished you could bottle it and save it for when the wife was around. "Agent vanHoten?"

"Just failed his entrance. Back to Fort Leonard Wood tomorrow."

Machina mulled it over, eyeballing the room like he was sizing it up for a fight, sucking smoke through the filter of his cigarette and blowing it out his nostrils, dragon-style. "Make me an offer."

"I'm authorized to extend immunity to two level orange breaches. Full immunity," he emphasized, "not that load of crap where you don't get to collect royalties or get your name in the history books."

"I want one level red, full immunity."

"We can't--"

"THEN I THINK WE'RE FUCKING DONE, HERE, AREN'T WE, ALEX!?"

"Shit, shit. Hold on." A bunch of pencil-dicked bureaucrats on the other end started sweating and talking.

No fucking way they were going to let him have a level red, especially not with full immunity. There've been three red advances since N-Day, and so far, none of them were his. His shit was too dangerous, too--

"One red level, full immunity."

"Holy shit! Alex, are you fucking serious? Be serious or I'll break your fucking legs."

"Yeah, god dammit, we're serious. One red level, no strings. You going to do it?"

"You must really need me."

The voice on the other end scowled audibly. "We would not have have called you if we did not."

Machina was as jubilant as a kid losing his cherry to his Swedish cheerleader babysitter. "Fuckin' a right, you need me. When do I leave and where to?"

"Siberia", the voice said. "We'll send an escort immediately."

[Machina]

No mercy in the weather this year. Shades of the Gulf of Danzig. Long Island sat like a hunk of ice in the middle of God's mint julep. Five above, Farenheit, and cars skidded down the icy roads at ten or twenty under to avoid fishtailing into the cars parked on either side like a pack of wild drunks.

Gerad had finished locking his security protocols into place five minutes ago. If anyone entered the perimeter, he'd know, and that was enough. He took the service elevator up into the husked office space, shut the door behind him and ground a cigarette out on the hardwood floor before giving a passing glance to his frosted windows with their sometimes shattered portholes where snow had collected and dumped their weight onto the ground below, and then lit another smoke. His ride would be here in seventeen seconds. He strode through the solid, old door and past the sensor array to the gate, smoking and glancing around at the end of the driveway, watching the black Lincoln limo pull down the street. Snow collected to a quarter inch on the shoulders of his overcoat and the top of his navy blue beret. The beret meant something, and Gerad wouldn't admit that it felt good to be wearing it again.

The driver pulled up in front of him and slid the last eight feet. They don't plow this road. Don't need to. The rear door opens and the second familiar and long-gone voice Gerad would hear today calls out "Machina! Get the feck in here, you miserable oul' git!" The voice is jovial, affected more British than the man using it merits, and accompanied by a model's hand locked in by three rings worth more than a middle class family brings home in a year, extending from a flawless Armani suit.

Machina climbs in and dusts the snow off himself and onto the leather, not meeting eyes with the figure opposite him until he's composed himself, even with that goddamn girlish hand still jutting out to greet him like a dog that won't take 'no' for an answer.

Gerad's fingers draw his cigarette from his mouth and he blows a jet of smoke from the corner of his mouth, extending his calloused, workman's hand to meet that of the man opposite him. He moisturizes, no doubt about it.

"Agent Arsenal", he greets him.

"Agent Machina", he smiles back, ophidian.

[Machina]

Knowing who Agent Arsenal is isn't helped by learning his name or where he grew up or his political affiliation, or any of the qualifiers one typically thinks they begin to understand a person by. None of those are pertinent to who Agent Arsenal is, save for the fact that he might never been been Agent Arsenal if he wasn't that other, now long-dead person who was recruited for the agency out of Cambridge long ago.

Now he's a Face. His job is to convince people that he is their friend. He has no religious or political affiliation. He doesn't care about the dole or the draft. His opinion is whatever the dossier says it is that week. His life story, his waltenschaug, comes to him in a manilla envelope with keys, money, and pieces of identification with his new name on it. Three weeks ago he was a Monacan playboy. Next week he'll be a diamond smuggler in California. Right now, though, he's Agent Arsenal, and who Agent Arsenal is, nobody really knows except Agent Machina.

What Agent Machina knows is that Agent Arsenal is nobody. He's a blank tablet that his superiors write on. He spends his time off drinking in the most expensive clubs he can find and sleeping the most beautiful women he meets. Those are his only constants: fine alcohol and womanizing.

Agent Arsenal is charming, witty, brogue, and just a little dangerous. He is a master at extracting your secrets by getting you to volunteer them. He is your loyal friend up until the day he disappears, and when he's gone you'll miss him dearly, no matter how badly he did you as he left. He is the patron saint of false sincerity.

In his many guises, Arsenal was regarded as one the best guys in the world to hang out with. The falseness of his sincerity should in no way indicate that he is unpleasant to be around. On the contrary; he has been described - in over forty languages - as the cultural relative analog of "a good bloke", and in all but one of them was the person saying it earnest and genuine in that distinction (and to be fair, Chechnyans never say anything good about anyone unless it's also part of a come-on). He always has the next round, always there with a joke or a cigarette, and was never insulting or boastful. He had money, perpetually, and beautiful women flocked to him. They'd thank the angels when this handsome, rich, tasteful, charming man entered their lives, and men would orbit him like moons, just happy to be a part of the club, taking advantage of shared fame. Arsenal was the consummate guest and your dearest friend, right up to the moment he was gone.

The only thing, in fact, that could make someone dislike Agent Arsenal - and even then, for a common man, do so with extreme effort - was to know firsthand what a complete and utter fraud his platitudes of friendship and civility were. Gerad had watched him betray people who trusted him scores of times in the name of the mission. He never really got used to it. And knowing, really knowing who Arsenal was inside, illegitimate children and broken hearts and ruined lives and all, the collateral damage that accompanied his every move set Gerad's teeth on edge. If he had seen him outisde of work, he would have beat him until he was shitting blood. Instead, the company had sent him to give the briefing. Punishment.

Agent Machina hated him.

[Machina]

Machina, rechristened 'Agent' for the purposes of this op, let a query-mark of smoke crawl out of his mouth and drew his hand away from Agent Arsenal's. He glanced around the inside of the limosine as if judging it. "Nice digs. The Agency's upgraded, I see."

"Only the very best for our illustrious former 'ead of R&D and the former 'ead of Bully Cell". Arsenal's mouth curled into a wry grin underneath his moustache. 'Bully Cell'; only the guys in Bravo Unit who served under Special Agent Cell Team Leader Donighal called it that.

"Vice Director of R&D", Machina corrected him. "No tin god gets to claim a Director's desk, even if they are smarter by ten or eleven deviations and six or seven doctorates from the baseline chimp runner-up." He drew in again, exhaling the jet into Arsenal's face, that bastard smiling still, not so much as blinking. "But you knew that, and you knew that I knew that. Stop trying to rile me, college boy."

Arsenal feigned a hurt look on his face. "So callous. After I requested to be assigned to this when I 'eard of your involvement and evvything."

"I bet you did. Missed making my life a living hell."

Arsenal's smiled widened. It was the first time he'd smiled for personal reasons and not as a part of some con in days. "Nuffin' doin', oul' mate."