The Discordant Opposition Journal Issue 8 - File 5
Our Trip to DEFCON8
By Fwaggle and InfinityMatrix
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-=***WARNING***=-
This writing is a complete work of fiction, written by fwaggle and me for kicks. And late at night might I add. Anyways, any of the events, incidents, sayings, et cetera that are in this work, and any similarities that you recognize herein are completely coincidental. So if you notice anything that you go "Hey! That happened to me/my friend/my family/my dog et cetera, we do not take responsibility for that. Sorry for that, now on with the show!!
This story can be quite confusing at times, so bear with it. It is written in two people's perspectives, so the perspectives change every now and then. The header will have the name of the person that is telling the story. Okay, have fun.
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InfinityMatrix
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Well, here I am, In the year 2000. It turns that all the Y2K bug hubbub was a bunch of bullshit. Nothing happened. Damn conspirators...
Anyways, I'm totally stoked to be going to DEFCON 8 with my best bud, Fwaggle. He is arriving in a few hours on his flight from TWA. And here I am sitting on my ass at Sea-Tac International, gate N3. As I sit in the black leather (black leather... hmm) chair, I slunk down deeper into it, listening to Fear Factory and watching the planes. I closed my eyes, and suddenly a vision came. A plane. (Wow, what a coincidence) But there was one catch to the plane. It was flaming, and lowering from the sky billowing black smoke. I opened my eyes. Blink. Wow. I thought about the people that say dreams are windows to the future. Then I thought about Fwaggle. I put the two together, and looked at the result.
I shook my head, and tried to forget that.
I stood and turned off my Discman. I wandered over to the electronic ticket kiosk and started messing around with it. Then a flight attendant or whatever came over to me and asked me to please. So, I abided, only reason was she was cute. Oh well. I sulked around to the coffee shop, and ordered a straight black coffee. I was up late night, trashing etc. I was thinking I could get some sleep. Maybe. Just maybe.
I sat down at one of the steel tables and start sipping my coffee. I pulled a PC magazine out of my backpack and started thumbing. This wait was starting to aggravate. I struck up a conversation with the person sitting next to me. He looks youngish, like me. I ask him what he's here for. He says DEFCON. I cock an eyebrow. I say "Me too. What's your nick?" Turns out, the dude I'm talking to is one of me best friends RELM. I introduce myself, and we both have stunned looks on our smug faces. We both laugh and exchange greetings and handshakes. He asks me what my plan for getting down there. I said fwaggle is coming over. He says "Kick ass!" I say "Yeah. What plans you got?" He says he's going with some Canadian phreaks/hackers. I ask him if he wants to join us. He says "Hell yeah!" So he goes over talks to this long haired guy. Long-hair nods and says something. RELM smiles and walks back over to me. He nods approval. I say "Cool." He grabs his backpack and we head over to my seat. We sit down. RELM asks me when fwaggle is arriving. I reply 7:13, and I check my watch. 6:54. Badass.
We walk up to the opening of the entry. Suddenly, a scream emanates from behind me. I raise an eyebrow and spin around on my heel. I look and there is a really fat woman caked with make-up and crying, on her knees in front of this pink object on the floor. It seems that one of those disabled people's golf carts has run over this fat woman's poodle. I let out a hearty belly laugh and an extra chuckle. RELM burst out laughing for a few seconds then composed himself. Everyone turned and looked at us like we had just set off the third A-Bomb. I just shrugged and say "What?" I heard a few snorts just then, but everything went back to normal except for the fat woman, just kneeling there like one of Satan's servants. And weeping.
Fwaggle
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I start to wonder what we look like.... You know, from a normal person's eyes... You know the type, respectable, law abiding. What would they think of spending 20 hours sitting next to four "misanthropes" like us.
It's amazing how different people turn out to be, when you've spent four, five, six years, sometimes more typing mysterious messages with them. You get to know them, then you realise that you never really knew them.
I was beginning to think that three quarters of GrunterHunter's "experiences" were bullshit... But when I first saw him at the bus loop of the airport I was genuinely scared.
I'd always been considered tall, but he towered above me. Not just tall, but solid. In fact I'd almost certainly define him as fat. Not to his face of course...
I could tell pheonix kinda felt the same way too... Probably by the way we both seemed to take 5 minutes to work our eyes up to his... Okay maybe I'm over-reacting and he wasn't that tall, but he seemed it.
They stood, I sat, cowering under the puny shelters awaiting the arrival of a bus from the northern suburbs. "Miss Demeanour" was the another surprise. For some reason all females always seem to come across as "ultra babe hax0r chicks" or whatever to begin with. Then when it comes close to actually meeting them, you start to think "ahh she's gonna be ugly I just know it".
It sounds kinda sad I know, but these are the things that actually go through my head every time I meet anyone. The funny thing is she was actually not that bad to look at. But I could tell straight away she hated me. I have that effect on people in person.
We all sorta stood around exchanging glances as if to say "we're not staring at total strangers are we", and I sure as hell wasn't saying the first word. Eventually Pheonix pipes up "I wonder if cDc really are that lame?"
The snickers and lack of confused glances confirm our identities to each other..
Apart from the lack of hair, Grunter looked almost "bikie" looking. A huge black T-Shirt barely covers his huge stomach. He's very obviously 20 something... My feeble brain has difficulty remembering people's ages.
Miss was wearing all those "home brand" clothes... The nameless, "give to the needy bin" look. Her two inch or so long black hair made me almost ask if she likes "that Manson fag".. Then I figured that with my reputation maybe it's better to remain silent.
I wore a black Misfits Tee for that little bit of extra "old school cred", and Pheonix was wearing a Frenzal Rhomb T, presumably to make our american friends just that little bit more concerned. It's not every day you meet someone with "I wash and wash but can never be clean" on their chest.
We walk towards the boarding area and I can feel my eyes widening as I spy the letters TWA on the tail of the plane. I control my fear by reassuring myself that whatever went wrong last time would have been fixed when they covered it up. Oops did I really think that? I'm such an anarchist..... Heh..
Miss stops, and says "So who's who?".. "I'm Pheonix, this is fwag" pheonix says pointing to me. "I'm your worst nightmare" Grunter says in a way that i guess he'd practiced thousands of times in the mirror to perfect.
I felt good that I still hadn't had to talk for myself. Maybe Miss would eventually like me if I could keep this up. I decided that my in-flight entertainment would be a vow of silence.
We board the plane when this over-paid, under-brained lady tells us we can. I climb into the furthest seat and start to stare out the window.
Miss sits between us (lucky her, wonder what she did to deserve such karma) and pheonix on the third seat, next to the aisle. Grunter takes the seat on the other side of the aisle.
Seemingly as soon as his ass hits the seat he begins hammering the armrests and chanting "al-co-hol.. al-co-hol" until another of said brainless women tells him that nothing will be served until we are in flight.
Pheonix tells him it's so if there's a problem taking off and we die in a flaming reck they might be able to salvage some alcohol, upon which he receives a weird look. We're used to weird looks.
As the plane begins to taxi out onto what could possibly be our death row, I withdraw my CD Player from my pocket.. I stick robo-deafness plugs in my ears and hit play... About 15 seconds into "Let the bad times roll" it goes silent.
It's gone dead, the batteries are most likely flat. "I seem to have exhausted the power supply to my personal audio equipment" I say to no one in particular. I think about how I love stringing together large groups of large words.
This thought's quickly replaced with the thought that'd we hadn't even left the ground yet and I'd broken my vow. Such self control....
Pheonix is used to it, but the others look at me as if I was a mute for 10 years and had only just spoken. Just then the growing-ever-more-annoying hostess looks at me and announces that personal cd players are not allowed on board because they can interfere with the controls on the aircraft.
At this time Grunter lets his eyes widen and go out of focus, and cracks a tiny smile and I consider that maybe I should hide my beloved discman for the duration of the flight to stop us ending up as fish food in the pacific ocean.
As we lift of the ground, Pheonix shouts "mexican wave!" and he and I fling our hands back and up. We turn around to see that no one followed our lead. We're disappointed, and slump into our seats.
"It sucks being immature on an overseas flight" I say loudly for some reason. I begin to drift aimlessly in thought.
Quite a few hours later I tell pheonix that I'm going to "Tell the driver to plant the foot a bit". He looks at me as if he's thinking of a way to tell me I need restraint...
I walk to the front and bang on the door yelling "hey man can you put your foot down a bit? No one's gonna have a radar gun up here".. At this point everything went black.
I was informed later that I was cowardly pistol whipped from behind with a plastic serving tray, by one of the more feisty hostesses. Then I was dragged back to my seat where I mysteriously slept like a baby - even through Grunter's drunken rendition of "8 million bottles of beer on the wall".
I awoke at 7,997,834...
I looked at pheonix. He was trying to sleep. Miss had her head buried in some fat book. Grunter was singing and attempting to build a can wall on the armrest next to him, not noticing that the hostesses kept removing the cans.
I stare out the window, but it's dark. I'm not sure when I went to sleep, but Pheonix woke me when it was time to get off, and I felt like my head was going to explode.
To my surprise, Grunter was still drinking. Pheonix told me he'd passed out once, woke up hours later and began drinking again.
We grab our limited baggage and step out into the airport ready to make our way through customs. Grunter jokingly looks at the lady and says "Guess how many pounds of smack i've got up my ass". She didn't see the joke, and Grunter was escorted off to a room for a "chat". 20 minutes later he returned tucking his clothes in.
"Half an hour in a foreign country and I've already lost my anal virginity...." Grunter spat as we lose the fight not to snicker..
We begin looking through a confusing foreign airport for "Gate N3", to hook up with the rest of the crew...
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InfinityMatrix
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Finally, the door to customs opens. A few people come out and were greeted at the metal detectors. I tap my foot. RELM starts snapping his fingers. Finally, a group of four young people walk out of the door. One is tall-ish and normal looking. One is tall, pretty fat and has long black hair. Pretty scary in appearance. Another is built like the first one. The fourth one was a girl. Me and RELM looked at each other and nodded. She was kind of tall, not exactly. She had black hair dyed purple at the ends, and she had painted her fingernails black. We flagged them down and brought them to our seats. We started introducing eachother. The first one introduced himself as fwaggle, the leader of the bunch. We nodded and shook hands. Smiling at eachother, we met the second guy. He introduced himself as GrunterHunter. We nodded and went on to the third one. He told us he was Phoenix. And the last one bowed and introduced herself as Miss Demeanor. RELM and I bowed back, in courtesy.
The group started down the halls talking and laughing, drawing some attention. We all laughed at the attention.
We got out to the parking garage and as soon as we walked in there, my jaw dropped. In the place of my car, was broken glass. Our car had been stolen. RELM takes a look at me and asks what the matter is. I say our car has been stolen. All of us have sullen looks on our faces until I say "Fuck it. Let's return the favor." Everyone grins an evil grin as I scope out a nice green Land Rover. I start to move towards it. As if it is an act of god, GrunterHunter pulls a lockpicking kit of out of his backpack. He grins, and he gets to work. We all watch in awe as he pops the door open with ease within about 15 seconds. "After you" he says. with a smile on his face. "Don't mind if I do" fwaggle says as he zips up to the drivers side of the car. He pops the hood and then sticks his head and hands under the hood and works his magic. The car starts up. He pulls his head out and slaps RELM on the hand. "Tag. You're it."
We all pile into the car. I am chosen to navigate (Whoop..) and RELM is driving, because all of the Australians drive on the other side of the road. Anyways, we get out of the parking garage safely with no incidents and we are on our way to DEFCON 8!!
Interstate 5
A couple hours of hard driving we have reached Oregon. We are driving pretty smoothly. I am reading a map that was in the glove compartment of the vehicle we "borrowed." Pretty convenient if you ask me. Anyways, it had only been a few hours and fwaggle was already getting on phoenix's nerves. Presently, I looked back and phoenix was trying to strangle fwaggle with his belt. I will play the mediator. "Calm down, damnit!" I scream. They both turn their heads and look at me. "Please." I add. They chuckle. Miss had been sleeping this whole time and had woken up and looked back. "Ooohhh.... Bondage. Kinky." She grinned. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep.
Suddenly I heard a low rumbling. I raised an eyebrow an looked back. Everyone had a surprised look on their face except Grunter. I asked him what happened. He replied "T'was my stomach. Must have food..." he trails off. "Good idea." I said. I told RELM to stop off at the next food joint. And what do you know, the all american restaurant, McDonalds. "Mickey D's!" RELM says, excited. "Cool. Let's stop there. Everyone ok with burgers and fries?" Everyone nods excitedly. And so the decision is made. Mickey D's it is.
We all pile out of the Land Rover and race to door of the building, laughing. I reach the door first and swing it open. We barge in. Everyone gets out their wallets and walks up to the counter. The clerk is all pimply and gross and says in a squeaky voice: "Welcome to McDonalds. What can I get for you?" Miss says back, with a sexy voice "You can get my number, and come over to my place in a little." She lets out a small purr. In a nervous tone the guy says "Thanks, but no thank you miss." We all have a good chuckle at that one. We all order our meals and sit down at a big table in the middle of the room. Halfway through our burgers, I have a brainstorm. I say "Pickle race." Everyone immediately knows what I'm talking about. If you do not know what a pickle race is, it is when everyone throws a pickle at a window of the store, and see whose reaches the floor first. It is quite fun. Anyways, I say "One, two, three, go!" We all our pickles at the window. Grunter is really getting into it. He is rooting for his pickle. "Go Phil, Go Phil!" He chants. I ask "What exactly is 'Phil'?" "It's my pickle, of course." He replies. "Of course." I mutter. Suddenly, fwaggle stands up a yells "YES!!! I WIN!!! BWAHAHHA!" We all laugh our asses off at that, and fwaggle sits down. Phoenix bangs his fists on the table. "Damnit!" phoenix says. "I wanted to win. Oh well." We all grin. Suddenly, I feel a hand gripping my shirt. This did not feel very comfortable. I whipped my head around and saw it was the manager of the restaurant. "Hey," I stole a look at his nametag. "-Jack. How's it hangin'?" He promptly squeezed my shirt harder and proceeded to throw me out of the restaurant. Same with Grunter (the manager didn't grab him, for fear of getting the smack layed down on him), Missy, phoenix, fwaggle and RELM.
So we got kicked out of the McDonalds. "We didn't get enough food!" Grunter whines. I spy a Kentucky Fried Chicken in the distance. "Fried chicken sound good, Grunt?" I ask. He smiles and nods his head.
"KFC it is." I say.
Meanwhile, when Grunter is jumping with joy, I start talking with fwaggle. "Hey man, whats the deal with lodgings?" He asks me. "Welp, I got a room that holds seven people. We got a discount." I reply. "Yeah, that's cool." But there is only six people here." fwag says, reasoning out the logic. "Yeah, I know. It was the only one I could get. I was late registering everything. But I got us discount register rates too." I say. "Cool." fwaggle says. "So if you meet someone you wanna bring in our room, feel free. We can have a party or two in there, or you can bring in a lady. Whatever you like." I add. "Right on." fwag says. Suddenly, Grunt says something very profound.
"Hey you guys. I just thought of a funny prank. I'm not really hungry anymore, but let's still go to the KFC. See, I have this weird ability of me being able to write on my own ass. So I thought we could go through the drive through with an order written on my ass." He says, excitedly. I start laughing like a maniac, and everyone is busting their guts...
"Good plan!" I say, pulling a marker out of my backpack.
While Grunter is in the van writing the order on his cheeks, I ask fwaggle if I can have his backpack for a second. "Do not be meddling with my personal belongings, little girly man." fwag replies in a strange mutated Arnold Schwartzenegger voice. "Hey!" I point a finger at fwaggle. "If you do not give me your backpack, I will kick your ass and set you on fire!" I say. Everyone lets out a small laugh. Fwaggle clutches his precious backpack to his chest. "Now." I say in a low monotone, extending my hand. Fwag obeys and reluctantly gives me his backpack. "Thank you." I say. I root through his bag and quickly find what I am looking for. "Americana," one of the Offspring's albums. I take out the case and throw fwag his backpack. He drops it. "Nice move, swift." I joke.
The door to the Land Rover suddenly opens and Grunter emerges. He is laughing heartily. "Hey guys, the task is complete." He starts laughing again but then trails off, until he is grumbling and looking at the marker I had given him. I ask him what is wrong. He looks up at me with the fires of rage in his eyes. "You gave me a permanent marker." He throws the marker to me and I catch it. I look at the label. Sure enough, it is a permanent ink marker. I look up with a nervous look on my face. "I'm really sorry man... really, really sorry." A silence falls over the group. Missy finally pipes up: "Just rub it off with some alcohol." We all agree and pile into the Land Rover once more. I pop in the Offpsring CD into the Cd player. I promptly turn it to Why don't you get a job. I start to sing... "My friend has a girlfriend and he hates that bitch... he tells me everyday!" Fwag reaches over to me and slaps me in the back of my head. "Shut up!" he says. "Okay! Damn, chill out, bro!"
I say. Back on the road we were.
We drive for a while until we reach the KFC we were trying for. We promptly drive into the drive thru. Grunter gets the position, his ass against the glass. We drive up the window and Grunt pulls his pants down, exposing his white-as-a-ghost cheeks. You know, I really wish we had taped the whole ordeal. The look on the attendant's face was absolutely priceless. We drove away, screaming, hooting, hollering and laughing like maniacs. The driver behind us gave us the finger, and I returned the favor without even thinking. We keep driving until we reach.........
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Fwaggle
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After the Airport incidents, McDonalds incident, a smaller "incident" in a Kentucky Fried drivethru, we thought that the rest of the trip would be kinda quiet.. We couldn't be furtherIn from the truth.. It began with me and Pheonix leaning out the window screaming "someone help me!" at pedestrians we passed. This proved immensely entertaining.
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InfinityMatrix
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California
We're in California and are ready to turn into Nevada, the home of the great city, Las Vegas, which is our final destination. Not much happened in California. We mostly just slept. RELM had taken some No-Doz's before we had set out from a bathroom brake, so he was real hyper. I fall asleep.
I'm sleeping until RELM pokes me. "We're here. Las Vegas."
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Fwaggle
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We arrive at some huge hotel..... RELM starts to pull the car up, I wasn't paying much attention... I'd managed to lightfinger some batteries for my cd player, and was deep in thought. In the silence between tracks I knew that Grunt and Miss were discussing the emotional effects of being slammed over the head with a crow bar.
We abandon the car somewhere where it'll be towed away (for our convenience) and we all follow Inf into the hotel. We get just inside the lobby and I remember saying "are we there yet?" and being answered by many weird glances. I decide not to answer my own question and wait and see what the hotel would have.
While others are making the arrangements, I begin to browse through the expensive looking shit stacked all over the place, conveniently roped off so I couldn't walk near it. I think to myself that it's probably just as well. I'd be selling my ass for the next ten years to pay for some of this stuff..
I see a bum walk inside, and sit down with his back against the wall. I walk over and stand above him as one of the hotel employees approaches him. "Quite an illustrious establishment you have here," I say to the hobo. "Are you the manager?"
I'm sure that guy wanted to throw me out too. I decided that that was rather fun, and try to find someone else to annoy. I decide it's time to invade some girl's personal space. I stand as close as I could without being sued for assault, and smile, looking straight at her. Eventually she gets nervous of my presence and turns around, moving back slightly. I try to think of something scary to say, and the best I could come up with is "I've got new underwear on". It had the desired effect.
I start to wonder how long until security will have me removed. I walk into the center of the lobby and start bashing my forehead. "Just fucken shut up in there all of you shut up!" I can feel the weird looks. I think of other stuff that I'd read in magazines.. "Be quiet you little fucks. I'm in charge, and we'll only move when we find a more suitable host body."
Some guy in a fancy ass hotel uniform walks up to me and I get the feeling he's about to grab me and throw me out. "Don't touch me I'm contagious" I say. He walks away, I guess he's going to ring the police. "Let's get inside where I can hide okay?" I whisper to RELM.
We ride an elevator up a few floors. As we get off, I guess RELM must've decided it'd be fun to annoy employees too. He walks up behind some guy who is holding a tray and knocking on a door. Inf follows closely behind, and just as RELM taps the guy on the shoulder Inf relieves RELM of his pants.
"Can I help you?" the guy says. RELM looks at his lowered pants.. "Uhh never mind." RELM strikes Inf on the arm, afterwhich Inf rubs it and announces "Come, let us find accommodation."
We walk into a large room, and I decide to be weird again. I race to the window screaming "FREEDOM!" and press my face up against the glass. Inf gets creepy too, he runs to the bathroom mumbling "gotta go gotta go gotta go" before slamming the door and singing the rubber ducky song.
Pheonix looks at an empty corner and states "a payphone would look good there". I remove my face from the glass and follow his glance. Then I look at Inf who's looking at me, and we both grin... Da plan...
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InfinityMatrix
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Me and Fwag walk out of the hotel and scope out the parking lot in the back. We find that our Land Rover hasn't been towed yet. I smile. Fwag hotwires it again and we were on our way.
We drive for a while until we see a deserted phone booth. I get my crowbar and rope ready. I jacked the booth up a little bit with the crowbar, then roped it and attached the rope to the back of the Land Rover, then we drove. It tipped over. I got my wirecutters and we put it in the Land Rover. We then rove off to the hotel.
"Uhm, dude?" Fwag said while driving. "Yeah?" I asked while looking at the strip. "How in the name of Satan's little fluffy poodle are we gonna get this up to the room???" I asked, a little worried. Only two words Fwag uttered out of his mouth. "Uh-oh."
We looked around nervously. "Now!" I said. We hoisted the booth out of the Land Rover, and began running to the entrance. I peeked inside. The clerk was leaving to go to the bathroom. "Clear!" I said, cautiously. I opened the door and we ran like hell. A guy walked out of the bathroom. We ran by too quick, but I think I heard something like "What the hell is that??" I smiled, but the smile ws over quickly. I pressed the button on the elevator. Shit. Someone was in there. We quickly moved to the side. He walked by without saying a word. Maybe he was there for DEFCON... oh well.
We reached our floor, and we booked it to our room. I banged on the door as hard as I could. Someone heard me.. footsteps. Phew. Grunter opened the door with a surprised look on his face. He stepped and let us in. We raced in and set down the booth in the corner. Me and Fwag sat down on the couch together. We looked at our masterpiece. We both grinned heartily at eachother. Miss and phoenix came in from another room. They just stared. "Damn! You guys actually did it." phoenix intoned.
"Yup." said Fwag and I in unison.
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Well, that would be it for part 1. Stay tuned to the one and only DoJ for more episodes. Peace.
IM - infinitymatrix@phreak2000.com
Fwaggle - root@fwaggle.net
-Breakin it down in '99
