Tactical Espionage Graduation
Sometime in May 2003, one of my best friends was graduating from high school and had invited me to his graduation. He only had five "guest tickets" to give away, and the rest had all gone to various family members, so I felt especially lucky to have been asked to attend. I'd met Derek online about three years earlier and through a complete stroke of luck, he just happened to live across town from me, so it wasn't too long before we were spending our free time together, causing varying levels of havoc, and discussing such teenage staples as building computers, our stupid families, and the color of girls' panties. Truly deep conversations and adventures, as you can imagine, and so I definitely wasn't going to miss his ceremony.
I'd spent the night at his house so I could just ride with him to the ceremony, that way I'd absolutely be there on time. I had a change of clothes ready, I was riding with the guest of honor, and I had my ticket guaranteeing my entry into the venue. So when morning came, we were both fully prepared and looking forward to the day... except I realized that I had no ticket. After searching the area where I'd stored my stuff and slept, I realized what I had done... in my effort to make sure I packed everything I needed in order to quickly leave for the event, I'd left the ticket at home. After explaining to Derek what I'd done, we established that there was no way we could make it to get my ticket in time, so he asked me if I wanted to stay behind at his house and wait. After thinking it over, I said no, I was still coming. I'd figure something out. He gave me a naturally skeptical look, but I was determined not to stay behind for this one.
Due to inclimate weather the ceremony had been moved indoors to a church, thereby increasing the difficulty of my newly acquired stealth mission. After Derek and his family entered the building, I began circling the area in search of the best way to enter discreetly - I knew that going in through the front was a near impossibility, too well guarded. On the other hand, if I made it in through one of the back doors I would have to go through the entire building, avoiding whoever might be inside, or at least making them believe I was supposed to be there. After a few minutes of watching and thinking it over, I moved my focus to the back of the building and started searching for a way in.
People came and went from the building through a variety of doors along the back wall, but they were all being carefully locked behind them, until I came to the kitchen. The kitchen door was unlocked, and peering inside I found caterers flying around the room like so many bees in a hive... and so I steeled my nerves, opened the door and walked straight through the kitchen and out the other side, finding myself lost somewhere in the bowels of the church.
Wandering the hallways, at first I felt relieved because they seemed to be pretty deserted, but when I finally found a path that would lead me towards the sanctuary where the ceremony would be, I discovered that it too was guarded. Two men, deep in discussion about church business, stood between me and my goal, forcing me to retreat and consider another path. I took a staircase up to the second floor hoping to find a way back down on the other side of the guards, but as I pushed through a large set of doors, I ended up finding something totally unexpected. A wall of capped and robed graduates stood before me, clearly waiting for someone to come along and present them with the signal to behind their procession... but instead they got me. I bowed and apologized for the intrusion, and ducked back out through the door just barely hearing one of them say "Hey, it's that vid guy!" After the door closed, I paused for a moment and smiled. My reputation preceded me.
The whole upstairs had led to nothing but dead-ends, locked doors, and the crowd of graduates, so I crept back down the stairs and resumed the search downstairs. As I crept along the hallways once again, I felt my body grow tense as I heard a group of people coming from the direction of the two men and the sanctuary. It was obvious that I wasn't supposed to be back here, and if they saw me with no ticket, I'd be thrown out immediately, so I scanned the hallway and ran through the nearest open doorway. I was now standing in the middle of a small library, with shelves lining the walls, but nothing to hide behind except a table in the middle of the room. I immediately threw myself underneath the table, clustered some of the chairs together, and balled up behind the legs of the seats as tightly as I could. Most of the people passed, but I saw a set of legs stop in front of the door and turn as if to look inside, making me fear that someone had seen me leaving the hallway. After what felt like an eternity, another pair of legs arrived and started a conversation with the first set, and finally, all four legs left together.
My body was racked with tension and my heart caught in my throat, but adrenaline was flowing through my veins and I knew I had come too far to back out now. I climbed out from underneath the table, pressed myself against the wall and listened for any movement, and then slipped back into the hallway. It was quieter... something had changed. At first I couldn't figure out what had happened, but then it occured to me... the men were gone! Nothing stood between me and the seating for the friends and families of the graduates!
I crossed into the sanctuary portion of the church, took a seat in one of the "satellite" rooms that would be viewing the ceremony on televisions, and settled in to watch it all happen. Just a few minutes later, the graduates walked straight past that very room, and a few pointed through the door and said "Hey, that's him!", making me wonder exactly what my friend had been telling them in the room where they were all waiting. As he passed, he looked through the door and nodded, grinning at what he knew had happened.
Out the Window
Over the course of 2002, my life ran a swift descent into my own personal hell. My father's new fiancee Michelle had been living in our sad little ramshackle trailer for about eight months at this point, and my patience and sanity had pretty well been crushed beyond repair. The arrival of her furniture and personal belongings had signaled what felt like the beginning of the end, as suddenly a new person, arrogant and careless, started taking over the space where I had been forced to live alone for most of the past two years. Worse still, along with her things came an infestation of mice and roaches, like tiny parasites in her wake.
The "house" which I had made such an effort to survive in for so long had become a far cry from home, and in fact felt downright dangerous most of the time. The noose was tightening more every day, because I never knew what reason she'd produce to my father in order to destroy something else. For the first time, I was deeply considering my options of escape, how I could get away from the God forsaken state of which I was born.
I spent a great deal of my time online chatting with people via IRC, as this was one of the few remaining links to the outside world I was able to maintain. This fateful day was no different... I was locked away in my room, talking to the people I knew on IRC, my constant reminder that not too far over the horizon there was still a world that had some sense. Down the hallway into the kitchen area, I could hear Michelle talking on the phone, her voice escalating... I didn't know what was going on, but judging by the growing sound of rage, it couldn't possibly be good. After a few moments, I heard the phone slam into it's wall mounted base, followed by the entire house shaking from the force of the back door being closed. The phone began ringing again, as whoever was on the other end started calling back.
After a moment, I heard a scratching coming from outside the house close to my wall, followed by the ringing in the other room going silent and a flurry of error sounds coming from my computer. As I looked at my screen, I realized what had happened... she had disconnected the phone lines from the house. This situation had suddenly gone from bad to horror movie. I heard her enter the house again, rattle something around, and sit down, her three-hundred-plus pound frame causing the chairs at the table to let out a squeal of pain.
After taking a moment to consider her agility versus my own, I creeped into the hallway, slowly making my way forward while watching her reflection in one of the picture frames on the wall. As I continued watching from the relative safety around the corner in the hallway, I saw her head lift up and look down the hallway. It was at that moment, I realized what the rattling sound had been... she had commandeered my old B.B. gun from it's spot in the laundry room, and was now aiming it in my general direction. A second later, I heard the familiar "PFFT" sound, followed by the clattering of a tiny piece of copper bouncing off the walls around my head. I ducked into the second room in the hallway, just as I heard her words echo "You stick your head out and I'll shoot your ass!"
After a moment, I heard her go outside again and I took this opportunity to return to my room, and consider my options. I heard more scratching sounds coming from outside, followed by her coming back into the house. A glimmer of hope in my heart, I checked the phone line to my room... nope, still dead. I quickly grabbed my beat-up HP laptop and put it into my bag along with it's power adapter, a change of clothes, and what little cash I had. I needed shoes, though, and I cursed myself for leaving them in the hallway. As I questioned the wisdom of trying to retrieve them, I heard another pellet go clattering against the walls in the hallway.
A moment later, the main phone line rang. She had gone outside to reconnect the main line! After a moment, she answered the phone, turned on the waterworks, and began blubbering to someone who I assume was my father. While she blubbered away, I rushed into the hallway, grabbed my shoes from their position, and ran back into my room, pushing my chest of drawers against the doorway. I carefully lowered the bag containing my computer and clothes out of the window, and then climbed out myself, dropping onto the steel frame of the trailer, and then down to the ground.
As I ran across the street to a neighbor's house, I couldn't help but look back over my shoulder expecting to see her face glaring out of any one of the front windows. Knocking on their door, I crouched behind some of their outdoor furniture, trying to stay out of view of my own house. Once they opened the door, I explained myself as well as I could, and asked to use their phone. I felt a pang of guilt, because while I didn't know any of their names, at some point my father had told me if I ever needed help I could go ask them.
I called one of the only phone numbers I could remember by heart, Kristy, one of my two sisters. No answer. I tried again a few moments later, still no answer. I apologized for seeming especially frantic and rude, and asked for a phone book... and after a moment of searching I called my sister's parents-in-law, asked if they could come meet me on the road, and hung up. I thanked the neighbors for letting me use their phone, and waited by the door for any sign of rescue.
After a few moments, my father's truck came trundling along the road. I knew that it'd be just as dangerous to go to him right now, because he'd likely never believe what was going on. Just behind him on the road came the car I was looking for, and so I was left trying to figure out how to get to that car without running straight into the fray and being seen. After some time, he pulls his truck into the driveway and drives up behind the trailer. The in-laws car turns around and starts heading back out towards the main road, and so I thank my neighbors once again, run outside, and climb into the back of the vehicle, simply saying "Let's go."
After a few hours, I'm on the phone with my father and Michelle as she states over and over that she would NEVER disconnect the phone lines or take a shot at anyone, even with a B.B. gun, as well as making a large act out of attempting to cut her wrists with a butter knife. I resisted the urge to tell her where the sharp knives were along with a reminder of "it's down the road, not across the street", instead choosing to let her insanity take it's course out in the open.
A couple of days later, I returned to my room long enough to get a few changes of clothes and anything else I'd need, under the agreement that I wouldn't be returning until she had vacated the premises. Around three weeks later, I returned home, the trailer now empty of her belongings. Despite her departure, her mark had been made and lived on through a permeating stench and the continued infestation of mice and bugs.
Around six months later, I was riding in the passenger seat while my father drove us into town. At some point he broke the silence of what had otherwise been a pleasant trip with a question to me: "Did you plant the two shots in the hallway?" It was at that moment that it became clear that I no longer had any business in that sad little trailer in Alabama, and that it was time to put my plans of escape in motion. Turning to him, I said "No." and the rest of the trip was spent in silence.
Human Katamari
In May 2005 I started making plans with Dalla to go to my first real convention. I'd graduated just a few weeks prior, and Dalla was soon going to be moving far away, so I took it as a good opportunity to spend some time with her before she left, as well as meet up with George who had already moved some time before. On top of these things, I pretty desperately needed a break from Orlando for something that wasn't a trip to get scowled at by my family. So after a few days, we threw our bags into the back of her friend Ben's car, and the three of us made the eight hour trip to Atlanta.
Over the next eight hours we discussed Godzilla vs King Ghidorah, feasted on a sack of Krystal sliders, and pondered the purpose of "No Apparent Reason Boners" or "NARBs". For a group of nerds, a convention road-trip is one of the greatest bonding experiences that can be shared, depending on a few key points: there needs to be some common ground between everyone in the vehicle, there needs to be a ready supply of good music, and there should be an understanding between the passengers that even if the convention itself isn't great, the group will still have fun together regardless.
The con was a small one, it was their first (and only) year, but it was fun. Some of the Robotech crew were guests for the convention, as well as the classical video game band Select Start. The most fun I had on Friday was actually sitting around in one of the open spaces of the hotel listening to Select Start practice and tune their instruments... I can't remember how long it went on, but I can vividly remember the feelings that were flowing through me as the band interacted and performed.
Video games have been a huge part of my life from a very young age. At around one or two years old, my cousin pushed an NES Zapper controller into my hands and pointed me at Duck Hunt, and after that I was gone. Because of their pertinence in my life, a lot of events in my life are also attached loosely to memories of video games. Music is also a huge factor in my life, capable of flooding me with memories more clear than anything I can conjure up on my own. So as I sat there listening to these six people play their instruments, the themes that slipped out of their instruments were much more than old game music... they were songs that embodied twenty years of joy, sorrow, and unadulterated nostalgia.
That night, I couldn't sleep at all, and so I spent the entire night wandering the convention area of the hotel, hanging out with anyone who was still awake, trading stories and playing whatever games were on hand. The next day I went to Select Start's actual concert, rode the elevator to the top of the building (seventy-six stories, highest I've ever been in a building), and attended whatever panels were interesting. But somehow, I wasn't having much fun anymore. My traveling companions were all off doing their own thing, and no one really had much interest in planning anything as a group. This weighed heavily on my mind throughout Saturday, especially since I wasn't likely to see George again for a long time, and with Dalla moving I wasn't likely to see her again anytime soon either. Feeling defeated I decided to turn in early that night, refreshing my body and mind for the final day of the con and the long trip home.
The elevator ride to our room was a long one, as we were positioned on one of the upper rooms in the hotel... probably close to a minute from the bottom floor to our room. As the elevator climbed it's way to our shared room, it began to sink in how tired my body was after not sleeping the prior evening. But once I slid my key into the lock and opened the door, I heard the voices inside. Dalla was in deep discussion with Ben about something, and I overheard her say "Agh, that's probably vid coming in to rest." and so I took a second to ponder my options. So I entered the room, smiled at the both of them, grabbed my iPod off the table and said "Hey guys, just here to grab this." then left.
Crap. What was I going to do now? I was exhausted, depression was setting in, and it was already after 11:00pm, so most of the convention had quieted down already. I shoved my earbuds in, and tried to just block everything out with some music while I waited for the long elevator ride to end. For a brief moment, I regretted coming on the trip at all, instead thinking that I should have stayed at home and saved what little money I had spent on the travel expenses. When the doors finally opened, the elevator had stopped a few floors short of the bottom, instead coming to rest on the same level as the main entrance to the hotel ballroom.
As I stepped out of the elevator, I looked around the mostly deserted floor and then down towards the open ballroom doors. The room beyond was dark, save for the multitude of spinning lights and the clamoring mass of glowsticks and flailing bodies. It was at that moment, I began to hear something I never expected... frowning, I pulled out my earbuds and stopped my music, trying to make out what I was hearing over the noise of the crowd emanating from the ballroom. Then suddenly, there it was... clear as a bell, a voice called to me... "Nah nah, na-na-na-na na nah nah, na KATAMARI DAMACY!"
Suddenly, my iPod was secured deeply in my pockets, followed by the earbuds and any other loose items I might have had. I found myself tearing down the hallway towards the source of the music, running into the ballroom with all of the previous bad feelings falling away. What I saw when I entered the room is an image I'll never quite understand, but will likely never forget. Thousands of people were thrashing, twirling, and gyrating their way around the massive room, while voice actor Greg Ayres acted as DJ and assaulted everyone's senses with a neverending barrage of lights and sound. And in the middle of the room, in the center of all of the chaos, was a giant clump of people being pushed and jumped onto from all directions... a giant living Katamari.
For those who are unfamiliar with Katamari Damacy, it's a game that revolves around making the Prince of All Cosmos (a tiny space alien) roll around a lumpy ball called a "katamari". The katamari usually starts off no larger than a ping-pong ball, but as you roll it throughout the world the katamari will pick up anything that's smaller than it's current size, gradually growing larger until it's capable of picking up pets, furniture, people, cities, and eventually entire land masses. Once the katamari is large enough, pretty much nothing can stop it and the entire world is gradually rolled together into one howling clump of insanity, which is appropriate given that the name "Katamari Damacy" translates to something along the lines of "clump of souls".
A clump of souls was absolutely what I was looking at, as more and more people clung to the mass as it was passed around the room. It certainly wasn't a spherical shape, since physics unfortunately refuses to work that way, but when you see a mass of people rolling and squishing around in a sort of oblong ball shape, you simply don't question in. Instead, you either throw yourself into the commotion of the clump or join the masses helping to guide the katamari around the room. And so I pushed my way into the fray, nodded at someone who was doing their best to guide the mass hysteria, and took their position. The last I ever saw of him, he was throwing himself into the pile and getting pulled into the center.
Finally the song ended, DJ Greg mixed us into the next track, and the giant clump of souls dissipated back into a regular old cacophony of dancing, trashing, and twirling. Before I knew it, it was five in the morning, the party was finally shutting down, and I'd been dancing all night, even when it'd finally dwindled to a point when there was only ten or fifteen of us left on the floor. High fives were passed around between everyone for making it all the way to the end, and the DJ admitted that he was only shutting it down because he'd been telling the con-staff that he'd shut down since 02:00am and figured they were getting pretty impatient by this point. I approached the stage and shook his hand, thanking him for pulling me out of my funk with his amazing performance, and finally returned to the room. Sore and completely exhausted, I grabbed a blanket, collapsed into a heap on the floor, and slept until much later in the morning.
Moving Truck
It'd been about two years, minus a few months, since I moved into the small apartment in Orlando with my roommates. However, the rent was going to be raised soon, the apartment was springing random leaks, and we were planning to add another member to our group very shortly. So we began searching for a house that we could rent for the four of us, and before long we'd found a particularly nice two story place for about the same cost per month as our little apartment.
In early November 2005 we signed the lease and began the process of moving our belongings into the new house. At first, things seemed simple enough... packing boxes, cleaning up the apartment, reserving a moving truck... the usual tasks. But when it came time to pick up the truck, the next twenty-four hours got complicated. Of the three of us available on the particular day, I was one of the two that had a driver's license, so Brett (the other driver) would take me to the U-Haul facility, and I'd take the truck back to our apartment to load up.
The truck was easily the largest vehicle I'd ever driven and that actually served to allay some of my apprehension about driving. After my accident in February 2004, I'd given up on driving and had instead taken to using public transportation to get around, so I was understandably nervous about having to pilot this craft back to the apartment. Once we hit the road though, my fear subsided as I realized that most people on the road are smart enough not to get in front of a huge moving truck, not even one that refuses to travel over thirty miles per hour.
Once I made it back to the apartment and parked the truck, I went inside to have a drink and collapse for a little while as we'd been packing and cleaning all night for several days already. Before I could get comfortable however, we received a phone call from the truck rental place, telling us not to turn on the truck under any circumstances. When asked why, they said very non-chalantaly that the truck they had rented to us had a fuel leak and could explode on ignition. As visions of myself being blown free of the cab by a giant ball of fire passed through my mind, I'm pretty sure they said something about calling back later.
After processing this phone call in my head for a while, I finished up my packing while waiting for the phone call which would decide the fate of the moving truck. When U-Haul finally called back, they told me to start up the truck and bring it back to them so they could exchange it for a new one. Naturally, this didn't mesh well with our previous conversation regarding of "Don't start the truck, it might blow up." and so I'm pretty confident that I yelled at whoever was on the other end of the line about not wanting to get exploded, and received the explanation that they had said that to make sure I didn't move the truck even though they had asked me not to. To them it was a funny joke, to me it just seemed like a good excuse for them to not come pick up their own damn time-bomb of a truck.
So I went outside, this time taking Brett along with me, said a silent prayer and started the truck. No fireballs, so far so good. And so I drove the slow-moving, awkwardly-turning Truck-O-Death back to the rental office, climbed into the new one, and began the return trip home... except this time the truck would just barely peak over twenty miles per hour, even with the pedal to the floor. It was even slower than the last truck and just as difficult to turn, and I couldn't help but correlate driving the truck to the slug-like handling of the Millenium Falcon in the GameCube game "Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II - Rogue Leader", but it was alright because at least this truck carried no threat of immolation.
We spent the rest of the evening loading the truck, and around 03:00am that night I once again took the wheel of the truck with Darryl along for the ride as navigator to the new house, while Brett drove his own car and took some of our smaller more fragile items. I'd only been along those roads a couple of times so far, so I definitely needed some guidance to find our new home, and before the trip was over I was going to be extremely thankful for it. There were virtually no other cars on the road as we slowly trundled along, but what had started off as a crystal clear night was quickly being covered in fog.
Every mile we drove the air seemed to get thicker and more difficult to see through, until we hit the final road and my field of vision became that of about two feet in front of the truck. This particular road has very little in the way of lights along it's path, except for a stretch of orange lamps near the end that only served to provide an almost ethereal glow out of the darkness. Trees, houses, and the sidewalk all seemed to have disappeared completely, leaving only a view of the few feet of road in front of us, and I couldn't shake the feeling that at any moment the road was just going to vanish leaving us tumbling into the abyss. To make matters worse, the truck was shuddering and trembling as if it were threatening to shut itself off at any moment.
As we neared the end of the dark road, we knew that we were coming up on the final turn before entering our new sub-division. I checked the mirrors for any incoming cars and then leaned down to peel off one of my socks, using it to wipe some of the grime from the windshield in front of me. Dirt on the inside was coming off, but built up mist on the outside was still obscuring our view and the windshield wipers had only served to smear the glass and make the situation worse. Once again I checked the mirrors, put the truck in park and opened my door, stepping out to wipe off the outside of the window.
The first thing I saw was that we were almost right on top of the turn we had been looking for, and probably would have passed it entirely if I hadn't stopped to clean the class. The second thing I saw was far less comforting. In the distance behind us, a pair of headlights had suddenly clicked on and were heading towards us. I scrambled into the truck and slammed on the gas, trying to get the truck to move a lot faster than it was capable of, all while yelling at Darryl about having moved to Silent Hill and being hunted by demon cars that suddenly appear in darkness, rather than slowly fading in through the mist.
After making our way into the subdivision and finally parking the truck in front of our new house, I slumped back into the seat, taking in how ridiculous this whole event had been. I'd moved more times than I can remember in my life, and while they had all been exhausting experiences, I certainly couldn't remember them being events that were anything like this. The next day we'd unpack the truck and return it to the rental place, and the truck would shudder and stop moving just across the street from it's destination. But that waited until tomorrow. Tonight I pulled a blanket and a pillow out from the back of the truck, went inside, and spent the first night in our new home.