The fourth coin drops through the slot. The digital display is flashing one zero zero, one dollar. I can buy anything I want. Actually not anything, just a bunch of junk. Chicken salad, ham and cheese, turkey club. Food full of funky chemical agents like Sodium Benzoate (also used in car anti-freeze) and Trisodium Phosphate (you have to wear rubber gloves and goggles when you handle the stuff because it dissolves grease.) Plastic space age crap. A chimpanzee would have the wisdom to just stay away its so unnatural; even a starving dog wouldn't be interested. Makes me sick to the stomach.
The principle is this. Pay up, then make a selection using an alpha-numeric pad. Letters from A to F and numbers from 1 to 9. If you have enough credit a coil spins and as a consequence pushes the food you chose forward. Then the delicious super processed piece of plastic wrapped consumable drops into the delivery tray. Push the flap at the bottom and pick up the object of your desire. Also, don't think you can stick your hand in the machine and grab stuff because you can't.
There are fifty four items to choose from and whichever one I choose will tell you everything you need to know about me.
What I want is item F6. The price is $1.25 so I need to drop another quarter in the slot.
In a display worthy of the village idiot I fumble the coin. The coin follows a neat parabolic arc to the floor. Starts to roll with that distinct sound. The laws of probability dictate that it has equal chance of rolling in any direction. Let me tell you that almost all the time it's gonna go somewhere you can't reach. Having said that the coin is now under the machine.
The digital display tells me I still have one dollar. The only thing you can buy for one dollar is some kind of blue cookie. With sad pink globules on top. Nobody wants to buy those, the coil where the blue cookies are is still full. It's blue because of Indigotine, a petroleum-derived triphenylmethane. Mice die from acute convulsions immediately after being injected with Indigotine. Those cookies would fit right at home among some chemical warfare recipes, like the one that melts skin. The idea is to unleash a huge payload of this skin-melter over enemy territory. Hilarity ensues. Now, imagine that enemy garbage gorging on blue cookies, then dying in a staccato convulsion dance. Nice stuff. Should fuel the usual talk I have with those crazy guys from the chemlab during cigarette breaks this week.
I'm all for the blue cookie. Maybe I'll make it a staple in my daily diet. I can see it now, me at my desk, munching a nice blue cookie while my coworkers eat whatever their wives packed in their plastic lunch boxes. I wish for once I could take a plastic lunch box and slam their faces in with it. I bet they pack their wives in there too. If so, I'd like to open one of them red lunchboxes and get me one of them Mechanical Stepford Wives. Wind them up and watch them go go go. No matter. The building is empty. It's empty because they all went home. It's empty because it's the middle of the night. No red lunchboxes, no stupid coworkers. On second thought I don't want to die from acute convulsions. No blue cookie. I need to find twenty five cents. Seriously. What I want is F6. I must have F6. The blue cookie's B4 if you're curious.
There's a camera filming this vending machine. Like it's so important to film the fucking vending machine. There are cameras everywhere here. You can't take a dump without being recorded and analyzed. The government's money at work.
I just have a five dollar bill and the machine just accepts coins. I press the button to get my money back and nothing happens. I press the button another fifty times but it's either broken or the makers of the machine never intended to give money back. I kick the vending machine; I'm not even making a dent. I shake the machine trying to dislodge F6. The damn thing must weigh a ton. Who knows why there's this yellow warning sticker on it showing a stick man getting crushed by the machine, just because he toppled it. Damn greedy stick man, got what he deserved.
I debate leaving the premises to go find change. It's OK to leave. The building is still as empty as a minute ago. Where I am I can't tell you because I work for a DOD contractor, the Department of Defense. Everywhere I go there's always a stick man in distress. Everything's gonna build up to the stick man and away from him. It's all about the fucking stick man. Or stick men. An army of stick men, all the same. Damn the stick men, damn them all to hell. I can't be thinking about them at the moment, I've got pressing business. Important business. Stuff to do.
After I procure myself item F6 I have to go back to my office and assess the destructive capability of this new Weapon System I'm working on. They call it the Department of Defense because they don't want to look like they're in the business of killing people, only that they're trying to defend themselves from those in the business of killing people. I guess it would be harder to justify spending 90% of your national budget on something called the Department of Mass Murder (DOMM).
When I get back to my office, she's there waiting for me. Her skirt and blouse are on the floor and she's bent down over my desk, in her underwear and shuffling papers. I get to her and grab her hips and tear off her white panties. After that I take my growing meat from my pants and guide it to her wanting pleasure hole. She's moaning and panting as I slide my love stick in and out. After five minutes I'm almost ready to blow my load and she disengages and drops to her knees and takes me in her eager mouth as I explode.
The first rule of war is rewarding a soldier for his actions. Like those stupid little ribbons and medals they give, Purple Heart, Medal of Honor, whatever. The guys in the psych lab think that just about anything will do. Drugs, peanuts, whatever.
We both get dressed and I ask her if she has a quarter because I need one to buy some junk food. No, she doesn't have any. I look through my desk and find no coins. To hell with ethics, I start to look in every drawer of every cubicle. Everyone has to start with a cubicle job first. Sometimes a guy dressed in a military uniform will walk through the avenue of cubicles. Is he inspecting or just killing time I don't know. Sometimes he barks like a dog. Out of the cold dead blue. Woof woof. Maybe he's a military reject psycho, some poor sap who couldn't cut it getting raped by a drill Sargent. Probably he snapped. Has admiral stripes on his coat. Damn.
I hate his place, my job is the mindless stroking of computer keys. Here I'm just a grunt, an overworked cubicle rat. My boss is this pig faced moron who doesn't know the difference between a terminal and a coffee machine. I have fantasies where I put a knife to his chubby throat, then I carve him up like I'm cleaning fish.
I'm in a random, dead-end no-window cubicle job. Where I work is classified, can't even tell the retarded cop who stops me everyday to tell me I'm going too fast. He asks me everyday, and I always tell him, it's top secret, classified, see this badge, this is from the DoD. Listen, what this means is I can't tell you squat, you can't even arrest me, or give me a ticket, so, piss off.
I need a quarter, so I go back to the cubicle area. Maybe one of those random idiots I work with have one buried somewhere in their desks. A real clown parade they are. The guy who works behind me is this spazz with a Moses beard and a missing index finger on his right hand. I urinated in his coffee while he was taking a dump (probably being filmed), crazy bastard drank the whole thing.
Then there's this guy in the cubicle next to mine. He actually talks to his lunch when he thinks no one's there. He strokes his bananas a lot. Last Tuesday I put his lunch in the trash while he wasn't looking. He didn't like that. Fat bastard.
Now this cube, lined with Dilbert comics, is where this ex ultimate fighting loser (never won a damn match) works. Guy's old and decrepit now. Probably the after effects of all the steroids he took. Let me tell you that after seeing Dogbert one thousand times, you just want to put the damn thing to sleep.
This is the desk of the office savant. You know like rain man, he keeps telling me about the fucking rabbits in Iowa, where the company has their annual award ceremony, where he always gets the employee of the year award. Guy has an IQ of 169. Wouldn't know it to look at him though. His desk is crowded with these moronic statuettes. Porcelain rabbits. I hate him.
Then there's this guy, his name is Joe. Joe from Russia. He won't talk to anyone. He keeps his green lunchbox (he's an original) under lock and key, like there's a ten pound gold fork in it, like there's not only a sad little saran wrapped pizza with a big peeled radish next to it.
I search all their desks. Nothing. No coins I mean, but I did find a lot of interesting objects that my co-workers would rather not have anyone know about. If they think their secrets are safe because of the cheap little lock installed on every drawer, well they'd be wrong. F6 will have to wait for the moment but having enough material for thousands and thousands of dollars of blackmail has given me a little satisfaction. For now. I also found six coffee cup branded with the stupid company logo. The government's money at work.
The DOMM has a tendency of hiring less than morally balanced minds. Those kids who burn bugs with a magnifying glass or find creative ways of killing a hamster usually grow up as good candidates for this type of work. My talent as a kid was finding clever ways of destroying my sister's dolls. Stuffing one full of Acetone Peroxide (that is sulfuric acid (drain cleaner), hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach) and acetone (nail polish remover), just make sure you don't blow your hands off), and a mixture of ketchup and ground meat gives a great show for all.
In the end, it's all a big dick contest. Who has the biggest bomb, the fastest plane, the best probability of kill. I for one can't wait until we have huge armies of robots just itching to destroy anything that moves. So if your kid likes to jump on packs of ants don't scold him, send him to college so he can get an engineering degree, and remember that war is the most lucrative business there is.
The building is empty. Chubby's office is locked but I have the key, a copy I made when he asked me to water his plants the week he went to London to show off our latest weapon management algorithms. I eyeballed him for a full ten minutes once while waiting for him to figure out how to print a document. He told me I was a creep. That I was quite a piece of work. Yeah, I bet he wants a piece of my ass too. I unlock and open the door and switch the lights on. On his desk, which is surrounded by an impressive collection of old hand guns, a Walthers P38-9mm, a F.N. 38 revolver, a VIS-9mm (a Nazi favorite), a Smith & Wesson 38 Standard revolver, none of them loaded or in firing condition, is a shiny silver quarter. I pocket the coin. In his top drawer is his loaded Glock 37 .45 GAP, I pocket that too. In my fantasies, after I'm done slicing chubby, I take this same Glock, I burst into the cubicle farm, and I pump round after round into all the worthless human wastes flapping at computer keyboards, blandly staring at their screens. I'd be doing them a favor.
Strange things happen here at night. You always hear stories, but I know, I seen stuff that would traumatize the most hardened serial killer. I run back to the cafeteria, where the vending machine is waiting with my dollar. The Glock is digging in my hip bone. I put my hand in my pocket to make sure the safety's on, blowing my wang off is not part of my plan. When I get there and as I guide my boss' quarter into the wanting slot of the machine I notice something's wrong. I hold on to the coin. The digital display tells me I have zero credits. Also the F6 coil is empty.
The building is empty. Someone is fucking with me. I put the coin back in my pocket and take out the Glock, and switch the safety off. Maybe one of those crazies from the bio-lab is still here. No one wants to go in the bio-lab because, frankly, it's disgusting. Just hearing the stories are enough to make you spray your lunch. There is this myth circulating that the company president pissed his pants just reading a tech report. The bio-lab is sealed off to anyone who doesn't have a clearance level of 5 or higher. My clearance level is 2. The stuff I seen is My Little Pony compared to what goes on in the bio-lab.
The kids who put their pet hamsters in the microwave, well, they work in the bio-lab now. What the government wouldn't want you to know is that the testing is not restricted to hamsters.
In the cafeteria all the lights are off. The chairs have been put on the tables. A spiky forest of metal legs. My boss tells me that the robot soldiers are being built right now, and that he’s fighting to get the contract so we can program them. He even tells me that some prototypes are in the building right now. If we don’t get that contract the government is closing us down.
I see movement next to the garbage can. I learnt how to shoot a gun when I was a kid. My uncle what gun crazed. He would take me to the local dump to shoot rats. The thing moving next to the garbage can is not a rat.
It’s her again and this time she ain’t naked.
She’s holding item F6 up in both hands. Cupping it. I yell “Drop the item!” but she doesn’t move.
They want the robot soldiers’ brains to be hardwired neural networks. Some people at MIT are looking into using biological neural tissue to build these. For one thing it would be cheaper than silicon. Or probably they're using both. Cyborgs. Fun things we do here.
The building is empty. I run towards her so I can pry F6 from her small hands. She’s aware of me now and she gets up and runs away. Out of the cafeteria and into the main corridor. There is a line of fake plastic palm trees in the main corridor. When I get there she’s gone. The fake trees are palm trees because it’s the most calming, research says. Like we’re supposed to think we’re at the beach or something.
The corridor is empty. At the end of it is a door. The bio-lab.
When I started working here, at my interview, they asked me what I thought of animal testing and if I minded working on technology designed to kill people.
The bio-lab door is bullet proof glass. My clearance level is 2. And I see her through the glass door. When she sees me she disappears deeper into the bio-lab. Chubby’s clearance level is 5. So I run back to his office and find his passcard. His picture is from ten years ago, when he still had some hair left. When I started working here he wasn’t director yet. Everyone has to start with a cubicle job first. His desk was behind mine. He kept telling me that the Japanese were ten years ahead of us. He got to be director when the guy that was director before him disappeared. He stopped coming to work.
He told me the Japanese won’t make robot soldiers, that instead they were making robot insects. What happened to the old director nobody knew. A police detective interviewed everyone at work. He told us his apartment was empty. A national search warrant was issued. That was ten years ago.
They never found him. The FBI, the police, whatever. They’ll never find him.
I flash the level 5 passcard in front of the reader and the bio-lab door slides open. I step in. The entrance is blocked by another door. The purifier they call it. I push a button and step in. After I’m purified the door that leads into the lab opens.
As soon as I’m in she jumps me. Her mouth is wide open and she’s aiming her teeth at my jugular. I put my hand between me and her teeth and she bites my hand. Around us are cages with deformed chimps and hamsters and dogs and things I can’t even recognize. The chimps all start screaming when they see the blood pissing from my left hand. She won’t let go and she’s surprisingly strong. So, I do the only thing that comes to mind when her teeth go for my jugular again. I stick the nozzle of the gun in her mouth and pull the trigger. The chimps are going ape shit now. The thing is, even with her head blown off her body is still going. She’s choking me now. I aim the Glock at her torso and unload the whole clip.
When I get up and look down, she’s still wiggling. She’s not going anywhere. I rip off part of her skirt and bandage my hand. What I get is the impression that she’s not human. Second rule of war: de-humanize the enemy.
The Glock is empty.
Condensed air is coming out of a vent over a heavy looking metal door to my right.
I push the door and it’s the morgue. On the five metal tables are two human bodies and three chimps. They all have one thing in common, they have no heads. On the back wall is a shelf with three smaller and two larger brains in bottles. The approximate power consumption of the human brain is 30 Watts. A usual light bulb consumes 60 Watts. I go back to the main lab, where the chimps are.
There are figures moving behind the glass wall at the far end of the lab. The chimps have calmed down. When I get to the glass wall, I look inside and a bunch of white coats are standing around a table. Some poor guy is lying on the table with tubes sticking out of every orifice. Pins with wires are boring into his brain. I look back into the lab, the deformed chimps are silent.
I knock on the glass wall and two white coats turn around and spot me. They exchange a few words and one of them goes to a console and flips a switch.
I black out at that moment. When I regain consciousness I’m on a table and I can’t move my head or anything else. I’m surrounded by five white coats. “Lets try this again now mister Green, maybe fifty is your lucky number.” Their voices are moving away “Turn up the power and regulate the amplitude of his synaptic activation potential this time. Put a hard limiter of point five micro-volts …” He turns a valve on the tube that is coming out of my right arm.
The fourth coin drops through the slot.
