Part 25

by William (Blue) Berry

General Eberhart lay on the left side of a queen size bed. He lay motionless as if he was afraid stirring might rouse someone for the subconscious is slow to accept things.

It was a warm May night, but air conditioning took care of that. The reason for his sweat was the dream. He had the dream on and off again for forty years. It was never the same twice, but enough elements stayed the same that he knew it was the same dream.

One element that stayed the same was a smart-alek narrator. Once in the dream he figured out the voice was of Brad Washington, his freshman roommate at Podunk College. He hated the worthless beatnik as much as Brad hated his ROTC. When he figured it out the narrator told him he was surprised his wittle soldier-boy mind could figure that outsy woutsy.

Another thing that always recurred was how it started. It was that day. Charlie shouldn’t have been able to hit the B-52, but he did. He and Captain Johnson bailed out Johnson’s parachute didn’t open. When he got down he noticed he had Captain Johnson’s parachute. Captain Johnson died because he used Eberhart’s. Then it started to veer from reality.

Eberhart wandered the crash site of a B-17 that had his third grade classroom. Then after wandering around the crash site, he was stuck in a tree. “Just like your little soldier’s mind to climb a tree now,” said the narrator. Charlie pointed his ak-47 at him as if he was about to get down and crush the gook’s throat with a karate kick. Charlie said, “Pity, chap, when you get down we will take you prisoner. Cheerio.”

“Your little soldiers mind can’t even remember the language,” said the narrator.

He was led to a cell and ignored the “Hey, how’d you get out of the tree so fast?” of the narrator. He was used to the next change.

The AK-47 changed to a kalishnakov rifle. “War over for you, Joe,” snickered the guard. He was still in his flight suit, but his fellow prisoner was in olive drab fatigues circa 1950 and was Humphrey Bogart.

“Here kid,” said Bogart handing him some not extremely muddy water, “They are going to move us far from the Pussan Perimeter. Forget being rescued.”

“Hey wrong war, soldier-boy, can’t your wittle mind even get that straight?” said the narrator.

Miss Thompson, his third grade teacher told him to go to the board and solve 9.873 times 4.421. He wrote it down and got an answer of 3.8. The class laughed as he realized he forgot his pants. Miss Thompson told him he failed and to return to his seat before he made things worse.

“I know how this part goes,” said Eberhart. “They load us onto a bus that has Humphrey Bogart and my third grade classmates on it. Jimmy laughs and milk squirts out of his nose. We pass a sign that reads ‘Inchon – 2 miles’ the narrator says ‘hey, can’t your wittle soldier’s mind grasp that not everybody speaks English?’ A Gook tells the driver, ‘Retournez! S’il vous plait.’ And revolutionary war soldiers rescue us. Can we please move on?”

At the medal ceremony Princes Leia looked like Carol and placed the Medals around Bogart’s neck and his neck. They smiled until he noticed his medal was bleeding. He looked at Bogart and saw it wasn’t Bogart anymore. It was Captain Johnson.

“You’re dead,” said Eberhart.

“No poop, Sherlock,” said the narrator.

“Don’t fail Lieutenant,” said the gray corpse of Captain Johnson, “that’s an order.”

As the red and white swirly thing appeared behind him and Ebehart fell the narrator said, “Wow, deep, man. I didn’t think your soldier-boy subconscious, could come up with that.”

He landed at Carol’s funeral. The Priest pointed at him and said, “The reports say it was cancer, but he knoweth the truth. The Lord will only tolerate your failures so far.” Then everyone tuned gray and pushed him into a coffin.

But the coffin wasn’t a coffin. It was his desk. It was his office. His secretary was not Sergeant Wilenski but Carol. She came in and put a folder in front of him. “You got left out again. They must know your sperm don’t swim. And you’d only blow it again. Why would they trust you with this?”

“It was that agent Orange. Even your soldier-boy mind can see that connection,” said the narrator. “Since you are so $tupid, I’m going to point out that the cancer victim should have been you. You failed Carol like you failed Captain Johnson, soldier-boy. Like you are failing again.”

General Eberhart sat straight up and got a glass of water. He did not try going back to sleep.



The first thing MJ noticed was the two MP’s with Elmer. Then she noticed Elmer’s eyes had dark rings around them.

“Please, Ms. Jenkins, I will speak without interruption. I’d rather not have you gagged.”

MJ noticed that was not worded as a threat.

“First, I guess I should thank you for the new phone. Oh, I was mad for a while, but I figured I shouldn’t cling to the past so tightly. So what if that phone carried the news of my second star, my first star, or the last words to me of my wife.”

MJ thought of saying something, but remembered Elmer Mussolini casually mentioning a gag. If it had been a threat she would’ve called the bluff, but it was so casual she decided to bite her tongue figuratively.

Elmer took out a cell phone. “Small thing. So small you forget it’s there. Not a REAL man’s phone, nor deep as a well, but ‘twill serve, ‘twill serve. It allows me to tell you of a good Christian value -- Forgiveness.”

When MJ rolled her eyes he sighed and said, “maybe I should have you blindfolded too.”

“Anyway, We keep forgetting how much of an amateur you are. This room is bugged so we might learn any useful information if he,” he pointed to Fredricks’s semi-conscious body, “starts babbling when he’s unconscious. We also have him on an EEG so we can tell when he’s faking it.”

MJ’s surprise must’ve shown because he explained.

“Oh, the wires you took off are irrelevant. We have wireless backups,” said Eberhart. “You may be relieved to find that we think you know nothing that we want. You will be moved to nicer accommodations. You can log on and view and confirm that you killed several of your friends by sending them an attached file that directed them to a site where they could download what he gave you hidden in that Bible. Of course you cannot send anything. Oh, by the way, I mentioned his faking unconsciousness because he is faking unconsciousness right now.

He turned to Fredricks, “We are not m0r0ns, you know. How long did you think it would take us to figure it out? She might be fooled by your weaving out of consciousness act, but we are not.”

MJ could not restrain herself, “When was he faking unconsciousness?”

“Every time you asked why he picked you,” said Eberhart. “And it worked too! You shut up.”

“Anyway,” said Eberhart, “You are not a prisoner you are in protective custody. We did not mean too, but we invaded your privacy because we thought you were intelligent. These men will escort you to a nicer room, still behind locked doors of course, but with no bugs.”

“Liar, Liar, pants on fire,” said Fredricks.

“Assume what you will,” said Eberhart. “There is no point in listening when there is no one talking. Except for guards and hospital staff you will have no visitors Ms. Jenkins.

Before she was led away Eberhart smiled and added, “I want to tell you that the dragon was a drug induced hallucination and no absolute TRUTH can be found in drugs.” He motioned and the MP’s moved. One in front of MJ and one behind. The front one said, “Follow me, mam.” And headed toward the door. He was kind enough, but MJ asked the one behind her, “and what if I refuse?”

“Then I’ll have to drag you out of a restricted access area,” said the MP.

MJ decide she would go peacefully and followed the first guard. Eberhart didn’t follow.



“She knows you’re going to monitor her Internet access and hope she leads you to that site,” said Fredricks. “Just like she knew you were listening. She’s played you for the sap you are”

“If she has, at least she’s been nice about it,” said Eberhart. “Well, reasonably nice. Her hostility was open and even understandable. I for one appreciated her stance”.

“Your usefulness to us has ended. That sounds like a bad James Bond movie quote. Don’t worry we won’t shoot you. We are the good guys. Well, almost. Did you think we didn’t know you were a junkie? We are taking you off morphine from the car accident. When you go through the DT’s and poop the bed a nurse will clean it up -- eventually. You were not very nice, and will probably continue to not be very nice. Understandably people do not like doing things for people who ! are not very nice.”

Fredricks thought about jumping up and strangling the old man. Unfortunately the straps on his gurney would not allow it.

Eberhart smiled. He could not read minds but Fredricks’s testing the straps was too obvious. “I can cut those for you. Then despite the car accident and coming of the DT’s if you can defeat the old, but armed and well trained in self defense guy before the guards who are monitoring this room come in and then fight your way out of a military base, hide in the general population of who knows where you are, and contact a friend you trust to help you, then you can shoot up some more. I can cut those straps for you but I don’t want to murder you in cold blood.”

Fredricks spat. He missed Eberhart’s face and the loogie flew over Eberhart’s shoulder.

“Your aim was off,” said Eberhart as he left. “DT’s are starting. I got to see about moving you to room with a drain in the floor so we can wash it down by turning on the sprinkler. Have a nice day!”




Fredricks had kicked before. The first time wasn’t so bad. He just slept through it. He could do nothing so he tried to sleep now, but sleep would not come. Then the sweating started.



Desk Seargeant O’Leary watched the crazy hippy and his quiet friend in the lobby. A pregnant red haired female came up to him and he engaged her in conversation instead of him. He ignored them and hoped they would go away but it was becoming animated. She tried to leave and the hippy said, “No, you're not.” The hippy started to reach suddenly for something behind his back. The metal detector would ‘ve go off if it were a gun, but O’Leary had had enough. “Actually,” he said, “none of you is going anywhere..."



Steve Welsch came to the station to start his shift and heard a hairy guy ask for Pinehero. He would’ve ignored it, but as he walked past he heard red-haired female say “Berry” a few times. He waited and thought about what to do. Then O’Leary was going to arrest them.

“It’s ok. I’ll take him up,” he said to O’Leary and then turned to J, “Try not to shed on anything.” He decided the woman and the silent one were not that important and splitting them up might defuse the situation.





J was going to sass the helpful cop back but realized that he was getting what he wanted and he didn’t want to convince his benefactor to stop helping him. He laughed good-naturedly.

“Your laugh sounds as fake as the weather girl when the anchor asks her again to bring sunshine for the weekend,” said the helpful cop. They climbed stairs until they were in a big room “Here you are.” He then yelled across the room, ”Carlos.”

A man approached them and the helpful cop said, “Heel” and went to meet whom J assumed was Carlos.

J overheard him although the helpful cop was trying to be quiet. “He was downstairs yelling your name and Berry. I figured getting him to see you might shut him up.”

Carlos noticed J’s looking over his shoulder and said, “This ain’t narcotics. I’m Carlos Pinhero. Why did you want to see me?”

“Can I see some I.D. first?” said J.

Carlos was going to have him thrown out but realized he was as paranoid as Berry was. He showed him his license.

“That can be faked,” said J, ”but you’ve had short notice.”

“And…” said Carlos.

“Is this secure?” asked J.

Carlos laughed. “Let’s go wash our hands,” he said and led J to a bathroom. “Running water, metal pipes, no windows, about as secure as you can get. Now tell me why I’m in a bathroom.”

“One minute,” said J as he opened all the stall doors. “What about the exhaust vent?”

“Instead of going to the roof we pipe the smell of cr*p into the Captain’s office. If someone is on the sloping roof the fan kinda muffles the sound. OK? Now spill it. I’m losing patience here.”

“We had lunch with Berry and saw him being followed out of the Chinese restaurant.”

“Who is ‘we’?” asked Carlos.

“My associate and I,” said J.

“Where is your ‘associate’?” asked Carlos.

This was not how J had though it through. He wanted the support so he wouldn’t run screaming, but having Dave downstairs right now didn’t seem wise. He wondered how to get off of Dave. He decided he had to regain control of the conversation.

“We can decode things on the computer you didn’t give the MIB.”

Carlos was used to non-sequitors when people didn’t want to be answer questions. They usually led to more questions. When you understood them. “You mean I didn’t give a computer to the Fresh Price?”

“No. They introduced themselves to you as ‘Homeland Security’. You kept one computer.”

Carlos knew enough to know this guy knew as much as any Internal Affairs rat. “Homeland Security got the evidence themselves. If there was a screw up it was on there part not ours. This department is clean and I resent the insinuation.”

J knew the signs of being mistaken for “them”. “Relax,” he said, “The MIB have not figured it out. Yet. Berry’s computer was online last night. It went online here. Trust me, I know it was here. The MIB wouldn’t do that here. You did. We can help.”

“Why? Not for nuttin’, but people usually are not eager to help anyone else for no reason at all,” said Carlos. “What is you and your ‘associate’s’ reason?”

“We are next if you fail,” said J.

Part 26

By Machiko Jenkins


I was fuming.

Amateur. That rat bas...prick had called me an amateur.

And then he was practically drooling over the thought of me leading him to whatever darn site he was talking about. I'd show him.

Amateur.

"At least I can pretend to act," I snorted. The MPs just gave me weird looks, but continued on the parade route. "I need to start smoking. I need to start smoking weed. Yeah, that's right," I growled at the shorter MP. "Weed. Grass. Mary Jane. Marijuana. Pot. And darnit all, if you don't stop staring at me like I'm sprouting a third head, I swear to all the gods that I will find a chamberpot to clang over your head."

I was finally shown to a room that was nice enough. "Oh please," I sighed. "Where are all of the cameras?" My only response was a slammed door. "Geesh. MEN!" I yelled, and proceeded to rant and rave some more about men, and what they could do with themselves, and where they could do what with themselves when.

Then I finally turned the computer on, groaned as I realised it was Windows 95, and launched Internet Exploder. First I checked out my site, then Morgan's site. Then I took a peek at my business site before going to read up on some of my favourite forums -- NitCentral, Straight Dope, a few others.

Finally, I had a bit of fun. http://www.WhiteHouse.com, turned the monitor off, and went to take a nap.

"Amateur, my arse."