Mild spoiler alert: I’m going to be ranting about this movie a bit, and there will be mild spoilers. You have been warned.
I can pinpoint the exact scene when “Cowboys & Aliens” goes from a good movie to a mediocre one. There is a scene in the movie where Olivia Wilde’s character is snatched up by an alien flying machine. That machine has been damaged, and miraculously seems unable to climb above the level of a nearby gully. While it winds its way down the gully the suddenly-heroic main character rides his horse along the rim, and is able to jump on to the back of the alien craft to free the damsel in distress.
That was the moment when I went from interested in this movie to angry at it. The signs were there before then that there might be trouble (this movie forgets the lesson of “Jaws” and shows it’s monster far too early), but before that scene I had been invested in the movie. From that moment on it went from an interesting take on a basically preposterous premise to outright lazy.
I left the theater after watching Cowboys & Aliens angrier than I’ve been at a film in a while. It isn’t because it’s a bad movie. For the first half of the film Jon Favreau takes a premise that should not work under any circumstances and keeps us interested. What made me angry was that the film wastes its potential over the second half on tired cliche.
At the beginning of the film we are presented with three interesting main characters. There is Jake Lonergan (as played by Daniel Craig) the amnesiac antihero outlaw who has an unusual alien weapon clasped fast to his arm. There Colonel Woodrow Dollarhyde (Harrison Ford) a hard man who is cruel as a matter of habit, and whose sole redeeming feature seem to be the protective nature he takes towards his wastrel son. Finally there is the enigmatic Ella Swenson (Olivia Wilde), a mysterious woman who takes a keen interest in Longergan because of his contact with the aliens.
All of them start and genuinely interesting, somewhat unique characters. By the end of the movie is manages to transform them into the two-dimensional characters we’ve seen everywhere else. Longergan is revealed as the outlaw with a heart of gold. Ella is revealed as little more than the damsel in distress (and a deus ex machina for the hero). Dolarhyde goes through a preposterous metamorphosis from a man scarred by war to everyone’s favorite uncle.
Every time Cowboys & Aliens gives up a secret it reduces the quality of the story. The aliens themselves go from overwhelmingly powerful and enigmatic to an inhuman equivalent to Star War’s Imperial Stormtroopers. Lonergan’s past is bliddingly obvious.The revelation of Ella’s actual nature is silly and aggravating.
The ultimate aim of the aliens is ridiculous. So is the means by which Lonergan becomes attached to his trademark weapon. Both are intended to be of interest, but instead only underscore the incompetence of the movie’s antagonists. I joked at the end of the film that Ewoks would come out to celebrate.
The movie isn’t a schlock-fest from beginning to end. Had it been I would have simply been disappointed. As it is the amount of potential it manages to squander over the back half of the movie just makes me angry.
I make no guarantees that you will have the same experience. Several reviews I’ve read have praised the movie. One reviewer I’ve read even put it at #2 of the best movies he’d seen this year.
It’s nowhere near that for me. Cowboys & Aliens was a good movie until it got lazy. After the halfway point I felt like I knew how every scene would end. I was seldom wrong but always disappointed.
Friday, July 29, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
The art of the antihero
After seeing Captain America yesterday, it occurred to me that as difficult as it is to do a true hero in fiction these days, it’s also quite difficult to effectively do an antihero. Antiheroes are everywhere in fiction, and have become in some ways more popular than their traditonal hero counterparts. I think it’s that popularity that makes them difficult to do well.
I feel that a lot of fiction these days tends to take a dark and brooding tone rather than bright and optimistic one. I suppose that this sort of blanket statement is difficult to support, but looking around a bit seems to bear me out. When heroes have any personality at all, it seems to be more likely to be the one of a man with feet of clay, or a dark trickster, or even an outright (usually at least partly heroic) sociopath.
I suppose I’m guilty of this myself. My most recent story arguably has no heroes in it at all. The main character at best could be considered an antihero.
Part of that might be the age that I grew up in. I am a child of the 80s, and so I appreciate a good traditional hero (cartoons of the 80s had bright colors and few dark moments), but when i first started to read comics it was the 1990s. The ‘90s were the age of the antihero in comic books. Characters that had been around for a while like Marvel’s Punisher got a gritty, realistic push as stars of their own books. New characters like Spawn and Cable that were created at the upstart publishers like Image and existing ones like Marvel were the kind to shoot first and ask questions later.
This was by no means a golden age of comics. In fact, when anyone is willing to speak about it at all they’re likely to consider it a dark age. Like it or not though these books pushed the idea of the flawed hero to new places, and comic books weren’t the only medium of fiction to do it.
The 90s gave us antiheroes in every medium is possibly could. Books, video games, movies, and even professional wrestling teemed with flawed heroes who were willing to use nearly any means to achieve their goals.
Now we’ve toned it down a bit. A wave of deconstruction that began in the 80s seems to have crested, but it left behind it’s influence. Not all of that influence is good. The black-trench-coat-wearing badass archetype has been overused to a point beyond parity. The gun-toting superhero likewise. Relying on these as a distinguishing feature is like relying on a silver paint job to find a car in a parking lot.There’s a lot of others just like it out there.
There are other archetypes that are nearing overuse as well. John Constantine is a snarky paranormal investigator. So is Harry Dresden. So is Peter Bishop. This concept was novel in the 80s (though it builds on themes previously common in the Film Noir genre), but now there are dozens of them. Not all (or even most) of the characters that fall under that description are bad, but it’s getting to be a crowd underneath that label.
For the record, I like the Constantine comic. I’ve never read the Dresden Files books (I know! I know! They’re on the list. Somewhere after the Song of Ice and Fire books and before the Harry Potter books. I’m a bad nerd.) but I hear they’re very good. I like Fringe, but I don’t really feel bad skipping the odd episode. For every one of these characters there are dozens that try to capture their success and fail.
They say that there is nothing new under the sun. I suppose to an extent that is true. The concept of the antihero in general has literally been with us for centuries. Because we seem to be riding a wave of them however introducing a new one and making him notable is something akin to becoming a pro athlete. Many will try, but only a tiny percentage will succeed.
I feel that a lot of fiction these days tends to take a dark and brooding tone rather than bright and optimistic one. I suppose that this sort of blanket statement is difficult to support, but looking around a bit seems to bear me out. When heroes have any personality at all, it seems to be more likely to be the one of a man with feet of clay, or a dark trickster, or even an outright (usually at least partly heroic) sociopath.
I suppose I’m guilty of this myself. My most recent story arguably has no heroes in it at all. The main character at best could be considered an antihero.
Part of that might be the age that I grew up in. I am a child of the 80s, and so I appreciate a good traditional hero (cartoons of the 80s had bright colors and few dark moments), but when i first started to read comics it was the 1990s. The ‘90s were the age of the antihero in comic books. Characters that had been around for a while like Marvel’s Punisher got a gritty, realistic push as stars of their own books. New characters like Spawn and Cable that were created at the upstart publishers like Image and existing ones like Marvel were the kind to shoot first and ask questions later.
This was by no means a golden age of comics. In fact, when anyone is willing to speak about it at all they’re likely to consider it a dark age. Like it or not though these books pushed the idea of the flawed hero to new places, and comic books weren’t the only medium of fiction to do it.
The 90s gave us antiheroes in every medium is possibly could. Books, video games, movies, and even professional wrestling teemed with flawed heroes who were willing to use nearly any means to achieve their goals.
Now we’ve toned it down a bit. A wave of deconstruction that began in the 80s seems to have crested, but it left behind it’s influence. Not all of that influence is good. The black-trench-coat-wearing badass archetype has been overused to a point beyond parity. The gun-toting superhero likewise. Relying on these as a distinguishing feature is like relying on a silver paint job to find a car in a parking lot.There’s a lot of others just like it out there.
There are other archetypes that are nearing overuse as well. John Constantine is a snarky paranormal investigator. So is Harry Dresden. So is Peter Bishop. This concept was novel in the 80s (though it builds on themes previously common in the Film Noir genre), but now there are dozens of them. Not all (or even most) of the characters that fall under that description are bad, but it’s getting to be a crowd underneath that label.
For the record, I like the Constantine comic. I’ve never read the Dresden Files books (I know! I know! They’re on the list. Somewhere after the Song of Ice and Fire books and before the Harry Potter books. I’m a bad nerd.) but I hear they’re very good. I like Fringe, but I don’t really feel bad skipping the odd episode. For every one of these characters there are dozens that try to capture their success and fail.
They say that there is nothing new under the sun. I suppose to an extent that is true. The concept of the antihero in general has literally been with us for centuries. Because we seem to be riding a wave of them however introducing a new one and making him notable is something akin to becoming a pro athlete. Many will try, but only a tiny percentage will succeed.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Movie Review: Captain America
Today I was afforded the opportunity to go see “Captain America: The First Avenger” in the theaters. It was (if you’ll pardon the pun) marvelous. I thought the filmmakers did a wonderful job of capturing what it is I like about the character of Captain America.
It isn’t the nationalism. Aside from the trappings of a 1940s-era PR push for war bonds, the film does a pretty good job of being American without wrapping itself in the flag. There are German, British, and French characters that are presented as heroic alongside the American ones. The writers and directors walked a fine line making an America-centric movie that would have global appeal, and I think they have probably succeeded.
Disclaimer here: I am a natural born citizen of the United States. I grew up with two grandfathers who were in the military during World War II. I loved them dearly and am sorry they are gone. I view the conflict in part through their eyes and so that may color my opinions on the matter.
What I think they got right was the idea that Steve Rogers is a hero not because he has superpowers, but because of who is is as a person. They took great care to set up the character as a particular kind of human being before turning him into a super-human. Actually if anything they beat you over the head with it a bit, especially during the scenes where Steve interacts with Dr. Erskine.
They did a wonderful job of avoiding one of my biggest fears, that Steve Rogers would turn into “wisecracking superhero number 36” or a gritty jackass. The tendency to have a character be either dark and brooding to the point of humorlessness, or be a one-liner machine has ruined a few movies lately (I’m looking at you Green Lantern). The writers and directors of this movie didn’t make him a nationalistic bully to make him “more human” and they didn’t make him a costumed star of some bad comedy for “mass appeal”.
Steve Rogers is the kind of character I like the most. His earnest desire to help others is the kind of hero that seems to have be de-emphasised in a lot of movies lately. He doesn’t have to be coerced into helping others. If anything he has to be restrained.
The movie isn’t perfect, of course. I agree with Gail Simone that Hugo Weaving made a far more effective villain before than revealing his “true” face than after. They did as good a job with the Red Skull as they could (and did his facial features far better than, say, Green Lantern did Hal’s mask), but the reveal still came off looking awkward and out-of-place in what is otherwise a pretty good looking movie.
In addition, Hydra uses far more “super science” gear than I thought they needed to. The initial uses of the Red Skull’s technology lent the group some menace, but by the end it felt a bit over-used. By the final few scenes the weapons looked more like action figure material than they did threatening. Aside from those fairly minor criticisms though the movie moved well and kept me interested from start to finish.
So, if you haven’t already I suggest you go see this movie. It’s well worth your time. It is well shot, well-directed, and it has a cast and crew worthy of the character. They did a wonderful job of taking what could have been just another superhero movie and turning it into something special.
I like the kind of selfless hero that they brought to the screen. I can only hope that the upcoming Superman movie takes a few notes.
It isn’t the nationalism. Aside from the trappings of a 1940s-era PR push for war bonds, the film does a pretty good job of being American without wrapping itself in the flag. There are German, British, and French characters that are presented as heroic alongside the American ones. The writers and directors walked a fine line making an America-centric movie that would have global appeal, and I think they have probably succeeded.
Disclaimer here: I am a natural born citizen of the United States. I grew up with two grandfathers who were in the military during World War II. I loved them dearly and am sorry they are gone. I view the conflict in part through their eyes and so that may color my opinions on the matter.
What I think they got right was the idea that Steve Rogers is a hero not because he has superpowers, but because of who is is as a person. They took great care to set up the character as a particular kind of human being before turning him into a super-human. Actually if anything they beat you over the head with it a bit, especially during the scenes where Steve interacts with Dr. Erskine.
They did a wonderful job of avoiding one of my biggest fears, that Steve Rogers would turn into “wisecracking superhero number 36” or a gritty jackass. The tendency to have a character be either dark and brooding to the point of humorlessness, or be a one-liner machine has ruined a few movies lately (I’m looking at you Green Lantern). The writers and directors of this movie didn’t make him a nationalistic bully to make him “more human” and they didn’t make him a costumed star of some bad comedy for “mass appeal”.
Steve Rogers is the kind of character I like the most. His earnest desire to help others is the kind of hero that seems to have be de-emphasised in a lot of movies lately. He doesn’t have to be coerced into helping others. If anything he has to be restrained.
The movie isn’t perfect, of course. I agree with Gail Simone that Hugo Weaving made a far more effective villain before than revealing his “true” face than after. They did as good a job with the Red Skull as they could (and did his facial features far better than, say, Green Lantern did Hal’s mask), but the reveal still came off looking awkward and out-of-place in what is otherwise a pretty good looking movie.
In addition, Hydra uses far more “super science” gear than I thought they needed to. The initial uses of the Red Skull’s technology lent the group some menace, but by the end it felt a bit over-used. By the final few scenes the weapons looked more like action figure material than they did threatening. Aside from those fairly minor criticisms though the movie moved well and kept me interested from start to finish.
So, if you haven’t already I suggest you go see this movie. It’s well worth your time. It is well shot, well-directed, and it has a cast and crew worthy of the character. They did a wonderful job of taking what could have been just another superhero movie and turning it into something special.
I like the kind of selfless hero that they brought to the screen. I can only hope that the upcoming Superman movie takes a few notes.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Break stuff!
I just finished using a shredder to mangle about 50 CDs worth of data. I did this for work, but it was immensely satisfying. A shredder isn’t usually my first choice for this thing (the hospital doesn’t really allow for the sandpit-and-a-shotgun approach to data destruction), but it was still enjoyable.
This got me thinking. Why is it that destroying things makes us feel good? Certainly I can understand why making something makes us feel good, since we’ve just created something through toil and skill, but why is breaking stuff just so much fun?
I’m going to chalk it up to the baser instincts of man. Sometimes you just neat to crush something. Taking a club, or a lead pipe, or an axe, or a baseball bat, or any other weapon to an object is a great release of stress.
I think we put pride and desire into the things we build. Accordingly, perhaps we put our hate and frustrations into the things we destroy. I’ve certainly pictured an object I’m pounding on as something or someone I despise, but not always. Maybe even without meaning to I ascribe those same traits when I’m not actively thinking about it.
So, nothing really profound today. I’m a bit spent after last night's marathon fiction session, and I enjoyed grinding those CDs to un-computer-readable chunks. It just struck me how cool it is sometimes to get to break things.
I feel like breaking some more things. I think I’ll go crush some cans or something.
This got me thinking. Why is it that destroying things makes us feel good? Certainly I can understand why making something makes us feel good, since we’ve just created something through toil and skill, but why is breaking stuff just so much fun?
I’m going to chalk it up to the baser instincts of man. Sometimes you just neat to crush something. Taking a club, or a lead pipe, or an axe, or a baseball bat, or any other weapon to an object is a great release of stress.
I think we put pride and desire into the things we build. Accordingly, perhaps we put our hate and frustrations into the things we destroy. I’ve certainly pictured an object I’m pounding on as something or someone I despise, but not always. Maybe even without meaning to I ascribe those same traits when I’m not actively thinking about it.
So, nothing really profound today. I’m a bit spent after last night's marathon fiction session, and I enjoyed grinding those CDs to un-computer-readable chunks. It just struck me how cool it is sometimes to get to break things.
I feel like breaking some more things. I think I’ll go crush some cans or something.
Fiction: "Check"
Apologies for the lateness of this one. It took me a while to get through.
I’m going to file this one under “what the hell is wrong with me?”.
This story was originally conceived a while ago as a silly story where a rather dull-witted James-Bond-esque super-spy somehow manages to win out over a criminal mastermind through sheer luck. Somehow in the intervening time it became...this.
I’ll be honest. I was almost tempted not to post this, as this blog is read by family and friends, and this is arguably the darkest thing I have ever written. Still, a part of me determined to see this through, and so it’s going up.
Before we start this, please allow me to make something very clear: I do not, under any circumstances, endorse anything that happens in this story. The actions taken herein are not in any way to be considered ideal. This is a story with bad people, and it is not intended to glorify them in any way.
With that caveat out of the way, let’s get this ball rolling. Once again I should mention that this is barely edited.
Check
Roger Bishop felt like he was going to die. Not from having been dropped dozens of feet from a helicopter to the surface of a rough sea in a dinghy. Not from nearly drowning as he abandoned the boat to swim over a mile to shore. Not even from the injuries he sustained from being pounded into the rocks by the surf as he came ashore. No, he would die from embarrassment.
His current predicament came straight out of a bad 60s-era spy movie. He had been sent into a hostile country, alone, to assassinate some tin-pot dictator. There was no back-up team. There was no expected extraction.
He had been chosen carefully for the mission, but it certainly hadn’t been for his ability to blend in with the populace. His blond hair and lantern jaw would stick out like a sore thumb here. Even if he could somehow hide those he towered over the denizens of a country stunted by generations of poor nutrition and the occasional famine.
Now he was being dragged bodily into a bare white cell by uniformed members of the dictator’s military. They had stripped him of his gear, given him a cavity search, and even given him an x-ray looking for hidden gadgets. The only way things could have been any more humiliating for a career spy like him would be if he had come ashore with a tuxedo under his wetsuit and a thermos full of martinis.
They had dressed him in a red jumpsuit. It offered little cushioning as he was simply tossed against the back wall of the cell. The impact shook loose a cough he had been suppressing, and the pain in his back was joined by a burning in his lungs. The door slammed shut behind the guards as they left.
Roger rubbed his back where it had hit the wall while a series of smaller coughs followed first one. He brushed his fingertips along the white-painted cinder-block wall. It was cold to the touch. It had to be freezing inside the room, with the bare concrete floor and unadorned walls, but inside his thin red coverall Roger was sweating profusely.
He had to keep his mind off what had to be a raging fever, so he struggled to his feet. He walked over to the door and pounded on it. He shouted loud enough so he would be heard through the reinforced glass window set into it.
“Hey come on!” he yelled. “You’re going to arrest a guy for going for a midnight swim?”
There was no response from the guards. Roger smashed his fist into the door a few more times. His only reply was the muted sounds of a few complaining prisoners coming from elsewhere in the prison.
Fatigue from his ordeal and his fever was already gnawing at him. Sleep was both the best and the worst thing he could think to do at the moment, and lacking any other ideas he lay down on the floor. It didn’t make much of a bed, but despite its hardness and chill Roger was asleep in moments.
He woke an indeterminate time later, and immediately regretted it. The muscles in his back were sore from sleeping on bare concrete At some point he had rolled on to his side during the night, and so his left arm prickled with the sensation of pins and needles. His head pounded with a headache worse than any hangover he’d ever experienced.
He tried to sit up, mumbling curses under his breath. His body ached and strained, but he was unable to pull himself upright. A moment later a shadow crossed over him, and a pair of hands slipped under his arms, hauling him upright.
His vision swam at the sudden movement. When it returned he was met with the sight of a figure standing in the door way to his cell. It was a teenager, overweight, with the bowl-cut hair that was near ubiquitous in this country and the small features in a broad face that marked him as a member of the dictator’s family. After a moment Roger recognized him as one of the middle sons of the family.
They boy’s face was twisted into a look of contempt. He looked Roger up and down, and then held an object up in front of him. It was the silenced pistol that Roger had been issued with at the start of the mission.
“Pathetic,” scoffed the teenager. “Did you really think that you could assassinate my Father, Our Glorious Leader, so easily?”
In his fevered state it was all that Roger could do to keep himself from giggling. He could practically hear the capitalized letters when the kid referred to his father. Instead he shook his head.
“I guess not,” he said. He lapsed into a fit of coughs.
“Certainly not!” the boy exclaimed, tossing the gun aside. Roger winced as the weapon hit the ground. He was afraid that it would go off, but it simply clattered into the corner. Roger could see the empty space where the magazine should have been.
The weapon was unloaded. He was intensely glad he hadn’t tried to lunge forward to take the weapon from the boy. He felt silly enough as it was.
“You and your kind are pathetic,” said the boy, “You have always tried to suppress our people. Now that we have found equal footing with you, you seek to stop our rise by any means necessary.”
By “equal footing” Roger assumed the boy meant nuclear weapons. The dictator had carefully concealed a nuclear weapon research program for decades. It had finally culminated a few months ago in a weapon barely more powerful than the ones the United States had dropped on Japan during the Second World War. It had still been enough to make the international community start taking him seriously.
“I guess you’re right kid,” said Roger. No sense arguing with someone who could order you shot on a moments notice. Yet. He needed some emotional leverage first.
The boy had his father’s sense of bigotry and xenophobia. Most of the local power structure here did. That and the bravado granted to them by a nuke had started the trouble that got him here in the first place.
“You’re going to be shot, you know,” said the boy. He was staring into Roger’s eyes, looking for some sort of weakness. Roger’s eyes were glassy with fever, and so the boy didn’t find what he was looking for.
Roger had known this would be a suicide mission, but he would be damned if he was going to let it end here in this cell. Pleading wouldn’t work, and he didn’t have anything to bargain with. That only left one option.
“They going to let you do it?” he asked the boy. “They going to let you shoot me so you can feel like a big man?”
The boy’s cheeks flushed in reaction. Roger smiled. He’d hit on something.
“I’m sure it’s going to feel great, putting a bullet in a sick man’s skull. It takes real balls to execute a man who can barely breathe. You get to feel just like your daddy.”
At the last remark the boy screamed and charged forward. Roger felt the grip under his arms tighten to hold him in place as the boy’s fist smashed into his solar plexus. The air flushed out of his lungs, and he found himself unable to breathe for a moment. When air finally did return it was expelled again in a series of coughs.
“Idiot elitist!” the boy shouted. He lapsed into a foul series of curses in his native tongue, and despite his pain Roger smiled a bit.
“My country is the strongest in the world, despite what you have tried to do to us! We have launched rockets into space! We have an army that the whole world fears! We are the best country in the world!”
“Yeah?” said Roger, “You don’t look so smart to me.”
The boy laughed. The sound was far from mirthful. It was hard-edged and angry. “Smarter than you!” he crowed. “We caught you easily enough. We knew you were coming before the people who sent you do your death even dropped you into the sea.”
“Maybe,” Roger said, coughing again, “but that was my boss’ mistake, not mine. You know what they say: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, manage. I’m not as dumb as they are. They don’t make idiots into spies where I come from.”
He wasn’t feeling to certain of that last bit at the moment. It was a desperate move to get a reaction out of the boy. He needed to make him do something foolish.
He saw a glint in the boy’s eyes, and knew he was going to get what he wanted.
“You think you’re so smart?” the boy said, his voice now low and sly instead of shrieking and hysteric.
“I think I’m smart enough,” he said, letting the boy make the next move.
“Then you get to prove it.” said the boy. “Do you play chess?”
Roger hadn’t played chess in years. He’d never been very good at it. He could read people well enough, but it was hard for him to think enough moves ahead to be really good.
“Yeah, I’ve played it.”
The boy’s face split in a wide grin. “You will face me then. I will defeat you and prove to you that my race is the most capable on the face of the earth.”
Roger stifled a grin. Every moment he spent with this kind was one less moment he had to worry about going up against the wall. There was still a chance this mission could work, if he could stay alive long enough. It wouldn’t do him any good to just pass out, however.
“Big deal,” he said. “Look at me. I’m so sick I can barely stand. I’m having a hard time just putting sentences together. You might as well be facing off against a corpse.”
“That can still be arranged,” said the boy, still grinning. Roger’s blood froze when he said it. It might have been a step to far to mention death..
“I’ll play you! I’ll play you!” he said. “I never said I wouldn’t. I just want the game to be fair. My brain’s about to turn to mush. Get me some treatment and we can start whenever you want.”
The boy nodded. “Later today then.” He turned on his heel and strode out. The two bodyguards that had flanked him went with him. Roger felt the hands that had been supporting him withdraw, and he dropped to the floor, unable to catch himself in time. He watched as the guard who had held him upright stooped to retrieve the empty pistol, and then left.
The door slammed shut again. It wasn’t closed for long. A few minutes later another guard entered carrying a tray with two paper cups. The first had two small, white, oblong pills in it. The other had water.
“I don’t suppose I could get some food too?” Roger asked. The guard ignored him. He simply sat roger upright and held out the pills in front of his face.
Taking pills offered by an enemy in the middle of a mission is generally regarded as a terrible idea. Given the current unusual nature of his assignment Roger didn’t resist. He opened his mouth, and the pills were tossed in. They hit the back of his throat in just the wrong spot and Roger nearly gagged. The guard gripped Roger’s chin roughly with one hand, and poured the water down his throat with the other. Roger managed to swallow the pills while spluttering as some of the water ran down his windpipe.
After the guard left Roger sat shivering on the floor, his back propped up against the back wall of the cell. He found his eye drooping again, and he gave into the messages his body was sending him. The medication that he had been given started to work, and the pounding in his head subsided enough that he was able to nod off into sleep.
This time the opening of the door to his cell woke him. The same two guards who had dragged him into the cell entered and hauled him to his feet. He felt considerably better than he had before sleeping, and was even able to take a few steps under his own power as they dragged him from the cell.
They took him to what appeared to be the prison’s cafeteria. The long tables where the prisoners ate their daily meals had been pushed to the walls, and a small table with two chairs had been set in the middle of the floor. The boy sat in one chair, with the guard who had held Roger upright for their previous chat stood next to him. The other chair was empty, and the two guards that dragged him in dropped him into it. They then zip-tied his legs to the chair’s, and both his arms to the chair’s arms.
“Hey, I thought were were supposed to play chess.” Roger said, “How am I supposed to play if I can’t even move the pieces?”:
“He,” the boy said, pointing to the guard next to him, “will move them for you. If it were up to me I would have left you free to do your own work, but my father’s men, “ the boy made a sour face, “insist that to be allowed to do this I am to take no chances. I promise you that this will be quite fair. The guard will make any move that you ask him to do. I am told he is actually quite the player in his own right.”
Roger responded with a non-committal “huh”, and tested his bonds. They were a knock-off of the type of flex-cuffs used by police departments all over the world. They were simple, but quite effective. They were too strong for him to break even if he were up to full strength, and they had no lock he could pick even if he had the tools to do so.
The board was set on the table. The white pieces were aligned to the boy’s side, and the black pieces were on Roger’s. Seeking to stall for as long as possible before the game began, Roger took the time to closely scrutinize the board.
It was a simple cardboard affair with plastic pieces, the type that might be found in a family’s game cupboard all over the world. This one showed signs of heavy use, with the glossy printed covering the board showing many scuff marks.
The guards picked up Roger and his chair and moved him into position to see the board more closely. The boy picked up one of his pawns, and nodded to Roger. He placed it down on a new square, signalling the start of the game.
Roger’s first few moves were complicated by his immobilization. He remembered that were was a number and letter system that indicated the location of any space on the board, but it took him a few tried to remember it’s orientation on the board. After a few fits and starts that he blamed on his fever, the game began in earnest.
To the guard’s credit, he performed every move that Roger dictated exactly as he instructed. Roger spend his time reacting to the moves that the boy made. Every once in a while the guard would toss a disapproving look in Roger’s direction as he made some ill-advised move.
The medication was starting to wear off, and it was getting difficult to concentrate. Roger’s coughs came at greater and greater frequency, and the headache was slowly beginning to return. Roger kept on as best he could
Time! All he needed was time!
The game was over far too quickly for Roger’s liking. He caught sight of a clock on the wall, and discovered that less than an hour had passed since the game had begun. The boy moved his final piece into place, leaving Roger’s king with no place to go. The guard reached on to the board and laid it on it’s side in a gesture of defeat.
The boy smiled and stood up. “Hah! I have defeated you!” he exclaimed. He shook his fists in the air in triumph.
“Best,” Roger coughed, “two out of three.”
Even strapped into the chair it was getting difficult for him to stay upright. The headache was back in full force now, even more painful than it had been before he had taken the medication. His skin was clammy and his shivered uncontrollably. The boy didn’t notice any of this.
“No,” he said. The wide grin was back on his face, which Roger now thought made him look like a strangely-painted jack-o-lantern.
The boy leaned in close, putting himself eye to eye with Roger.
“I defeated you fairly. I gave you your one chance to defend the honor of your people, and you failed!”
Roger smiled, and then let lose a racking series of coughs right in the boy’s face. A bit of phlegm dripped from his lower lip afterwards. No one moved to clean it up.
“”Bring him back to his cell,” the boy ordered, wiping his own face off with a kerchief. “He can keep the chair.”
Two sets of hands gripped the chair, and Roger found himself being carried bodily back to the cell. The guards deposited him and the chair carefully in the middle of the room and then left.
Roger let himself go limp. His head lolled forward, but the chair was a solid thing made of metal and so he stayed upright. He began to laugh maniacally.
His mission was a success. It had been suicide from the start, and still he managed to make a go of it. Despite the pain and discomfort that wracked his body now he felt the pleasure of a completed mission surge through him for the very last time.
Roger had known he was going to die, and for a while. His doctors had told him months ago that he had less than a year to live. It had crushed him at the time. He had face death before, but never with such finality.
Then his current employers had come to him. We know that you’re dying, they’d said. They’d told him that they wanted to give his death some meaning.
And so here he was. He’d been dropped alone into hostile territory with little more than a handgun and a barely-functioning re-breather. He’d been captured, and his pistol had been taken from. The pistol had been taken, but not the real weapon.
Roger coughed again. This time there was a sharp pain from inside himself, and instead of phlegm there was a trace of crimson dripping from his mouth onto his leg. The specially designed bio-weapon he had been subjected to was finally claiming his life.
It was a pity that he hadn’t been able to get to the dictator himself, of course. It would have been nice to start from the top of the organization. Still, the dictator doted on all of his children, and that should be enough. The boy would pass the infection on to his father, and his father to his commanders, and so on, until the entire command structure had been decimated.
It wouldn’t be just them, of course. Everyone he had come into contact with would die, in a matter of a few days. They would infect those around them, and those people would infect others. The death toll would be horrendous.
Roger did feel guilt about that. His superiors had assured him that the disease was designed to burn itself out quickly, so that the death toll wouldn’t be too high. They had even told him that the virus had been designed to mutate itself into a form that would be no worse than the common flu within a few generations, but Roger was fairly certain that had been a line a bullshit.
He didn’t care. The thousands that would die as a result of his actions paled in comparisons with the millions that would have been killed if this dictator and his cronies had been allowed to launch the war of extermination against their neighbors that everyone expected. And there were personal reasons as well. He wasn’t the first person sent deal with this particular psychopath, and some of those who had failed and been killed had been his friends.
Roger had resigned himself to the knowledge that if there was a hell he would be headed there. He’d come to than conclusion a long time ago. The fact he hadn’t cared was one of the reasons he had been recruited to begin with. At least, he thought, I get to take some worthless bastard with me.
He would have laughed, but he could no longer breathe.
This story was originally conceived a while ago as a silly story where a rather dull-witted James-Bond-esque super-spy somehow manages to win out over a criminal mastermind through sheer luck. Somehow in the intervening time it became...this.
I’ll be honest. I was almost tempted not to post this, as this blog is read by family and friends, and this is arguably the darkest thing I have ever written. Still, a part of me determined to see this through, and so it’s going up.
Before we start this, please allow me to make something very clear: I do not, under any circumstances, endorse anything that happens in this story. The actions taken herein are not in any way to be considered ideal. This is a story with bad people, and it is not intended to glorify them in any way.
With that caveat out of the way, let’s get this ball rolling. Once again I should mention that this is barely edited.
Check
Roger Bishop felt like he was going to die. Not from having been dropped dozens of feet from a helicopter to the surface of a rough sea in a dinghy. Not from nearly drowning as he abandoned the boat to swim over a mile to shore. Not even from the injuries he sustained from being pounded into the rocks by the surf as he came ashore. No, he would die from embarrassment.
His current predicament came straight out of a bad 60s-era spy movie. He had been sent into a hostile country, alone, to assassinate some tin-pot dictator. There was no back-up team. There was no expected extraction.
He had been chosen carefully for the mission, but it certainly hadn’t been for his ability to blend in with the populace. His blond hair and lantern jaw would stick out like a sore thumb here. Even if he could somehow hide those he towered over the denizens of a country stunted by generations of poor nutrition and the occasional famine.
Now he was being dragged bodily into a bare white cell by uniformed members of the dictator’s military. They had stripped him of his gear, given him a cavity search, and even given him an x-ray looking for hidden gadgets. The only way things could have been any more humiliating for a career spy like him would be if he had come ashore with a tuxedo under his wetsuit and a thermos full of martinis.
They had dressed him in a red jumpsuit. It offered little cushioning as he was simply tossed against the back wall of the cell. The impact shook loose a cough he had been suppressing, and the pain in his back was joined by a burning in his lungs. The door slammed shut behind the guards as they left.
Roger rubbed his back where it had hit the wall while a series of smaller coughs followed first one. He brushed his fingertips along the white-painted cinder-block wall. It was cold to the touch. It had to be freezing inside the room, with the bare concrete floor and unadorned walls, but inside his thin red coverall Roger was sweating profusely.
He had to keep his mind off what had to be a raging fever, so he struggled to his feet. He walked over to the door and pounded on it. He shouted loud enough so he would be heard through the reinforced glass window set into it.
“Hey come on!” he yelled. “You’re going to arrest a guy for going for a midnight swim?”
There was no response from the guards. Roger smashed his fist into the door a few more times. His only reply was the muted sounds of a few complaining prisoners coming from elsewhere in the prison.
Fatigue from his ordeal and his fever was already gnawing at him. Sleep was both the best and the worst thing he could think to do at the moment, and lacking any other ideas he lay down on the floor. It didn’t make much of a bed, but despite its hardness and chill Roger was asleep in moments.
He woke an indeterminate time later, and immediately regretted it. The muscles in his back were sore from sleeping on bare concrete At some point he had rolled on to his side during the night, and so his left arm prickled with the sensation of pins and needles. His head pounded with a headache worse than any hangover he’d ever experienced.
He tried to sit up, mumbling curses under his breath. His body ached and strained, but he was unable to pull himself upright. A moment later a shadow crossed over him, and a pair of hands slipped under his arms, hauling him upright.
His vision swam at the sudden movement. When it returned he was met with the sight of a figure standing in the door way to his cell. It was a teenager, overweight, with the bowl-cut hair that was near ubiquitous in this country and the small features in a broad face that marked him as a member of the dictator’s family. After a moment Roger recognized him as one of the middle sons of the family.
They boy’s face was twisted into a look of contempt. He looked Roger up and down, and then held an object up in front of him. It was the silenced pistol that Roger had been issued with at the start of the mission.
“Pathetic,” scoffed the teenager. “Did you really think that you could assassinate my Father, Our Glorious Leader, so easily?”
In his fevered state it was all that Roger could do to keep himself from giggling. He could practically hear the capitalized letters when the kid referred to his father. Instead he shook his head.
“I guess not,” he said. He lapsed into a fit of coughs.
“Certainly not!” the boy exclaimed, tossing the gun aside. Roger winced as the weapon hit the ground. He was afraid that it would go off, but it simply clattered into the corner. Roger could see the empty space where the magazine should have been.
The weapon was unloaded. He was intensely glad he hadn’t tried to lunge forward to take the weapon from the boy. He felt silly enough as it was.
“You and your kind are pathetic,” said the boy, “You have always tried to suppress our people. Now that we have found equal footing with you, you seek to stop our rise by any means necessary.”
By “equal footing” Roger assumed the boy meant nuclear weapons. The dictator had carefully concealed a nuclear weapon research program for decades. It had finally culminated a few months ago in a weapon barely more powerful than the ones the United States had dropped on Japan during the Second World War. It had still been enough to make the international community start taking him seriously.
“I guess you’re right kid,” said Roger. No sense arguing with someone who could order you shot on a moments notice. Yet. He needed some emotional leverage first.
The boy had his father’s sense of bigotry and xenophobia. Most of the local power structure here did. That and the bravado granted to them by a nuke had started the trouble that got him here in the first place.
“You’re going to be shot, you know,” said the boy. He was staring into Roger’s eyes, looking for some sort of weakness. Roger’s eyes were glassy with fever, and so the boy didn’t find what he was looking for.
Roger had known this would be a suicide mission, but he would be damned if he was going to let it end here in this cell. Pleading wouldn’t work, and he didn’t have anything to bargain with. That only left one option.
“They going to let you do it?” he asked the boy. “They going to let you shoot me so you can feel like a big man?”
The boy’s cheeks flushed in reaction. Roger smiled. He’d hit on something.
“I’m sure it’s going to feel great, putting a bullet in a sick man’s skull. It takes real balls to execute a man who can barely breathe. You get to feel just like your daddy.”
At the last remark the boy screamed and charged forward. Roger felt the grip under his arms tighten to hold him in place as the boy’s fist smashed into his solar plexus. The air flushed out of his lungs, and he found himself unable to breathe for a moment. When air finally did return it was expelled again in a series of coughs.
“Idiot elitist!” the boy shouted. He lapsed into a foul series of curses in his native tongue, and despite his pain Roger smiled a bit.
“My country is the strongest in the world, despite what you have tried to do to us! We have launched rockets into space! We have an army that the whole world fears! We are the best country in the world!”
“Yeah?” said Roger, “You don’t look so smart to me.”
The boy laughed. The sound was far from mirthful. It was hard-edged and angry. “Smarter than you!” he crowed. “We caught you easily enough. We knew you were coming before the people who sent you do your death even dropped you into the sea.”
“Maybe,” Roger said, coughing again, “but that was my boss’ mistake, not mine. You know what they say: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, manage. I’m not as dumb as they are. They don’t make idiots into spies where I come from.”
He wasn’t feeling to certain of that last bit at the moment. It was a desperate move to get a reaction out of the boy. He needed to make him do something foolish.
He saw a glint in the boy’s eyes, and knew he was going to get what he wanted.
“You think you’re so smart?” the boy said, his voice now low and sly instead of shrieking and hysteric.
“I think I’m smart enough,” he said, letting the boy make the next move.
“Then you get to prove it.” said the boy. “Do you play chess?”
Roger hadn’t played chess in years. He’d never been very good at it. He could read people well enough, but it was hard for him to think enough moves ahead to be really good.
“Yeah, I’ve played it.”
The boy’s face split in a wide grin. “You will face me then. I will defeat you and prove to you that my race is the most capable on the face of the earth.”
Roger stifled a grin. Every moment he spent with this kind was one less moment he had to worry about going up against the wall. There was still a chance this mission could work, if he could stay alive long enough. It wouldn’t do him any good to just pass out, however.
“Big deal,” he said. “Look at me. I’m so sick I can barely stand. I’m having a hard time just putting sentences together. You might as well be facing off against a corpse.”
“That can still be arranged,” said the boy, still grinning. Roger’s blood froze when he said it. It might have been a step to far to mention death..
“I’ll play you! I’ll play you!” he said. “I never said I wouldn’t. I just want the game to be fair. My brain’s about to turn to mush. Get me some treatment and we can start whenever you want.”
The boy nodded. “Later today then.” He turned on his heel and strode out. The two bodyguards that had flanked him went with him. Roger felt the hands that had been supporting him withdraw, and he dropped to the floor, unable to catch himself in time. He watched as the guard who had held him upright stooped to retrieve the empty pistol, and then left.
The door slammed shut again. It wasn’t closed for long. A few minutes later another guard entered carrying a tray with two paper cups. The first had two small, white, oblong pills in it. The other had water.
“I don’t suppose I could get some food too?” Roger asked. The guard ignored him. He simply sat roger upright and held out the pills in front of his face.
Taking pills offered by an enemy in the middle of a mission is generally regarded as a terrible idea. Given the current unusual nature of his assignment Roger didn’t resist. He opened his mouth, and the pills were tossed in. They hit the back of his throat in just the wrong spot and Roger nearly gagged. The guard gripped Roger’s chin roughly with one hand, and poured the water down his throat with the other. Roger managed to swallow the pills while spluttering as some of the water ran down his windpipe.
After the guard left Roger sat shivering on the floor, his back propped up against the back wall of the cell. He found his eye drooping again, and he gave into the messages his body was sending him. The medication that he had been given started to work, and the pounding in his head subsided enough that he was able to nod off into sleep.
This time the opening of the door to his cell woke him. The same two guards who had dragged him into the cell entered and hauled him to his feet. He felt considerably better than he had before sleeping, and was even able to take a few steps under his own power as they dragged him from the cell.
They took him to what appeared to be the prison’s cafeteria. The long tables where the prisoners ate their daily meals had been pushed to the walls, and a small table with two chairs had been set in the middle of the floor. The boy sat in one chair, with the guard who had held Roger upright for their previous chat stood next to him. The other chair was empty, and the two guards that dragged him in dropped him into it. They then zip-tied his legs to the chair’s, and both his arms to the chair’s arms.
“Hey, I thought were were supposed to play chess.” Roger said, “How am I supposed to play if I can’t even move the pieces?”:
“He,” the boy said, pointing to the guard next to him, “will move them for you. If it were up to me I would have left you free to do your own work, but my father’s men, “ the boy made a sour face, “insist that to be allowed to do this I am to take no chances. I promise you that this will be quite fair. The guard will make any move that you ask him to do. I am told he is actually quite the player in his own right.”
Roger responded with a non-committal “huh”, and tested his bonds. They were a knock-off of the type of flex-cuffs used by police departments all over the world. They were simple, but quite effective. They were too strong for him to break even if he were up to full strength, and they had no lock he could pick even if he had the tools to do so.
The board was set on the table. The white pieces were aligned to the boy’s side, and the black pieces were on Roger’s. Seeking to stall for as long as possible before the game began, Roger took the time to closely scrutinize the board.
It was a simple cardboard affair with plastic pieces, the type that might be found in a family’s game cupboard all over the world. This one showed signs of heavy use, with the glossy printed covering the board showing many scuff marks.
The guards picked up Roger and his chair and moved him into position to see the board more closely. The boy picked up one of his pawns, and nodded to Roger. He placed it down on a new square, signalling the start of the game.
Roger’s first few moves were complicated by his immobilization. He remembered that were was a number and letter system that indicated the location of any space on the board, but it took him a few tried to remember it’s orientation on the board. After a few fits and starts that he blamed on his fever, the game began in earnest.
To the guard’s credit, he performed every move that Roger dictated exactly as he instructed. Roger spend his time reacting to the moves that the boy made. Every once in a while the guard would toss a disapproving look in Roger’s direction as he made some ill-advised move.
The medication was starting to wear off, and it was getting difficult to concentrate. Roger’s coughs came at greater and greater frequency, and the headache was slowly beginning to return. Roger kept on as best he could
Time! All he needed was time!
The game was over far too quickly for Roger’s liking. He caught sight of a clock on the wall, and discovered that less than an hour had passed since the game had begun. The boy moved his final piece into place, leaving Roger’s king with no place to go. The guard reached on to the board and laid it on it’s side in a gesture of defeat.
The boy smiled and stood up. “Hah! I have defeated you!” he exclaimed. He shook his fists in the air in triumph.
“Best,” Roger coughed, “two out of three.”
Even strapped into the chair it was getting difficult for him to stay upright. The headache was back in full force now, even more painful than it had been before he had taken the medication. His skin was clammy and his shivered uncontrollably. The boy didn’t notice any of this.
“No,” he said. The wide grin was back on his face, which Roger now thought made him look like a strangely-painted jack-o-lantern.
The boy leaned in close, putting himself eye to eye with Roger.
“I defeated you fairly. I gave you your one chance to defend the honor of your people, and you failed!”
Roger smiled, and then let lose a racking series of coughs right in the boy’s face. A bit of phlegm dripped from his lower lip afterwards. No one moved to clean it up.
“”Bring him back to his cell,” the boy ordered, wiping his own face off with a kerchief. “He can keep the chair.”
Two sets of hands gripped the chair, and Roger found himself being carried bodily back to the cell. The guards deposited him and the chair carefully in the middle of the room and then left.
Roger let himself go limp. His head lolled forward, but the chair was a solid thing made of metal and so he stayed upright. He began to laugh maniacally.
His mission was a success. It had been suicide from the start, and still he managed to make a go of it. Despite the pain and discomfort that wracked his body now he felt the pleasure of a completed mission surge through him for the very last time.
Roger had known he was going to die, and for a while. His doctors had told him months ago that he had less than a year to live. It had crushed him at the time. He had face death before, but never with such finality.
Then his current employers had come to him. We know that you’re dying, they’d said. They’d told him that they wanted to give his death some meaning.
And so here he was. He’d been dropped alone into hostile territory with little more than a handgun and a barely-functioning re-breather. He’d been captured, and his pistol had been taken from. The pistol had been taken, but not the real weapon.
Roger coughed again. This time there was a sharp pain from inside himself, and instead of phlegm there was a trace of crimson dripping from his mouth onto his leg. The specially designed bio-weapon he had been subjected to was finally claiming his life.
It was a pity that he hadn’t been able to get to the dictator himself, of course. It would have been nice to start from the top of the organization. Still, the dictator doted on all of his children, and that should be enough. The boy would pass the infection on to his father, and his father to his commanders, and so on, until the entire command structure had been decimated.
It wouldn’t be just them, of course. Everyone he had come into contact with would die, in a matter of a few days. They would infect those around them, and those people would infect others. The death toll would be horrendous.
Roger did feel guilt about that. His superiors had assured him that the disease was designed to burn itself out quickly, so that the death toll wouldn’t be too high. They had even told him that the virus had been designed to mutate itself into a form that would be no worse than the common flu within a few generations, but Roger was fairly certain that had been a line a bullshit.
He didn’t care. The thousands that would die as a result of his actions paled in comparisons with the millions that would have been killed if this dictator and his cronies had been allowed to launch the war of extermination against their neighbors that everyone expected. And there were personal reasons as well. He wasn’t the first person sent deal with this particular psychopath, and some of those who had failed and been killed had been his friends.
Roger had resigned himself to the knowledge that if there was a hell he would be headed there. He’d come to than conclusion a long time ago. The fact he hadn’t cared was one of the reasons he had been recruited to begin with. At least, he thought, I get to take some worthless bastard with me.
He would have laughed, but he could no longer breathe.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Podcasting!
Today I got a really great opportunity. Thanks to a friend of mine (the wonderful Forrest) I got to record what will be the initial episode of the Unqualified Networks Podcast. Not only that but I was able to do so in an actual radio studio, courtesy of Monadnock Radio Group.
Podcasting is something we’ve been tossing around for a while. We’ve made plans, and even spend money on equipment, but never really had a good place to record. Now, thanks for Forrest and MRG we have about the best place we can hope for.
Currently we have one episode recorded. It isn’t up yet. It will go up as soon as I’ve had the opportunity to edit it. We’re planning on a weekly release schedule with new episodes coming out on Sundays.
The podcast doesn’t really have a format at the moment. The first episode is a rambling affair that sticks mostly to “geek” topics (video games, movies, and comic books). The next episode will have a completely different set of topics.
The first episode is free-form in nature. I don’t expect that to last either. We have a number of segments in mind, ranging from “Late to the party” (spoiler-laden reviews a month or so after something has come out) to “Video game cat fight” (in which we pit two similar video games to each other to see what’s worth the money).
I hope this works out. I don’t expect it to be much of a money maker, but I would eventually like to make it revenue-neutral. For now it will remain a hobby. It will be a hobby I have a lot of fun with though.
Podcasting is something we’ve been tossing around for a while. We’ve made plans, and even spend money on equipment, but never really had a good place to record. Now, thanks for Forrest and MRG we have about the best place we can hope for.
Currently we have one episode recorded. It isn’t up yet. It will go up as soon as I’ve had the opportunity to edit it. We’re planning on a weekly release schedule with new episodes coming out on Sundays.
The podcast doesn’t really have a format at the moment. The first episode is a rambling affair that sticks mostly to “geek” topics (video games, movies, and comic books). The next episode will have a completely different set of topics.
The first episode is free-form in nature. I don’t expect that to last either. We have a number of segments in mind, ranging from “Late to the party” (spoiler-laden reviews a month or so after something has come out) to “Video game cat fight” (in which we pit two similar video games to each other to see what’s worth the money).
I hope this works out. I don’t expect it to be much of a money maker, but I would eventually like to make it revenue-neutral. For now it will remain a hobby. It will be a hobby I have a lot of fun with though.
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