Underground

It’s 1:33pm, April 1, 1985. I’m six miles underground, in what command calls a “Sub-SIPP” for Sub Surface Indefinite Population Protection. The Army built this one only three years ago for security reasons. The type of work that gets done here, they figure, is probably best hidden a long way away from people. Hidden, that is, until the inevitable time when that work’s discoveries become relevant. Hopefully, we’re still a good thirty years away from that, so for now we operate underground.

Most of the work in this facility is in advancement and development of something called the “Goo”. The Goo, or “Snot” as it’s affectionately referred to six miles under, is weaponized serum composed of vast amounts of natural and synthetic steroids, combined with a healthy dose of long-acting amphetamine. Also added to the matrix is a controversial substance called Mort. Mort, as you’ll recall, is a distinctive radioactive phenotype originally mined on the planetoid called Mord. Unless you’ve been living under a rock (like me) for the last four years, you’ll recall that Mord was once thought to be a major threat to life on earth, and that NATO commissioned five separate shuttle missions to the planetoid to try and divert it’s course. We all know the story: Mord’s feared threat never came to pass, but the discovery of it’s mysterious, energy-rich mineral core justified the mission’s billion dollar expense many times over. I’ve headed the Goo project for the whole of it’s existence, pitching the idea to my superiors at the Pentagon, selecting the R&D staff, creating a budget, and, for the last three and one half years, devising and executing the clinical test-dose deployment.

Test Dose Deployment, or “TEEDEE”, was begun with a series of test conducted on insects and small amphibians, tadpoles mostly. That session, known to we who work here as “Number One,” was basically used to create effect modules for every subsequent test. Just today we start TEE-DEE 39 ( ! ), but I’ve detailed a team of three researchers whose only function is to perform the Number One protocols over and over again. The idea being to make sure the volatile components of the experiment can be counted on to react the same way despite environmental variables.

With any luck, all will go according to plan and TEEDEE 39 will perform favorably. If that happens, we are all acutely aware, this staff will be re-assigned and TEEDEE will be put to it’s singular and, frankly, miraculous design purpose. For me, our work’s successful completion represents both a sizeable blessing and a gut-tearing bane, as I’ve grown quite close to my staff here and to our work. We have become almost like family in these months underground.

***

Our testing will take place in the same controlled environment, a ten foot by ten foot glass-enclosed room that the research team calls The Phone Booth. The Booth is surrounded on all sides by a circular concrete tunnel, which provides a 360 degree view into the booth for the team-members. At opposite ends of the circular tunnel are large circuit boards, each with a colorful array of buttons and two long levers with goofy joke-attachments stuck on top. One of them is Spongebob Squarepants, I don’t recognize the others. A small bumper-sticker that says DOGSHITLAND.blogspot.com has been, just within the last week, pasted to the glass window of the Phone Booth.

As I gaze into the empty white room the weight of all this work suddenly settles into my temples and suddenly I’ve got a ripping migraine. I take my seat behind the control board and turn towards the Booth, pretending to not be in torturous pain. Somebody says

BOOTH IS CLEAR

And I hear the words repeated and repeated through the lab. Somebody says…

ENTER

…and the same echo-chain of confirmation results. I see one wall of the booth slide back, and subject number one for the day is brought it. It’s woman, She looks vaguely Asian, but she’s very, very tall - at least 6’2”, and her coloring is light brown. She’s wearing a white jumpsuit and her eyes are droopy. We have to tranquilize most of our subjects here. We try to keep them shielded from the testing up until they’re up, but they’re human beings living around one-another. There’s always talk.

Apparently there had been a lot of talk in this particular case. Subject Number One is sweating from her head and face. She’s glistening in there, shifting her weight between her feet and rocking. The team members leave and the wall seals up. Number One begins to talk.

I can see youse

There’s no way she can see us. But she maintains:

I can see youse. I ain’t…I ain’t afraid.

Belying the obvious with her fear-crippled croaking. Her mouth continued to move, but she wasn’t really speaking. It happens a lot in the final seconds. A voice said

Are we sealed?

And the monitor in my right ear said;

SEALED!

I heard a noise like a jet turbine revving to take-off RPM.

***

The Russians make an 82”mortar shell for light infantry and smaller mechanized units. It’s blast, equal roughly to that of twelve to fourteen hand-grenades going off at once, does ugly and amazing things to both armored steel and human flesh. I’ve talked with several combat field commanders, all of whom swear up and down that this weapon is by far the most awful and hate-inspired thing currently deployed in combat engagement.

In the phone booth, an oval-shaped panel slides open directly above Subject Number One’s head. Her eyes peer back in their sockets and, just as the subjects head starts to follow her gaze upwards, a Russian High Explosive mortar shell appears, hangs for an instant in the panel-hole, then falls. Subject’s face looking up just in time to meet the bomb. For a nano second they’re frozen in there. I see the woman, I see the shell, I see the panel hole seal up. I hear a voice say…

CONTACT!

***

Despite the structural fortifications of the Phone Booth, everybody watching from the tunnel does a sort of reluctant duck-and-cover move. Theoretically the Booth space can safely contain a low-impact tactical nuclear device and everyone here knows it, and still we duck. After watching this and similar testing for literally hundreds of subjects, it’s funny. We all still duck.

The smoke, black and filled with ashy particulate, begins to settle and air vents hidden in the chamber start to suck the bomb-debris away. As the circulating air clears my view I begin to see what’s become of Subject Number One.

***

I was brought up on a big farm in Bucks County, PA. My parents made money, their entire income eventually, by selling the things they grew and the dairy products their animals produced. I’m no stranger to bloodletting and exposed-anatomy . My experiences preparing beef and pork and chicken for sale hardened me I guess you could say. But when I looked into the Phone Booth unit, what I saw there wasn’t so much reminding me of butchered livestock. Instead I found myself thinking of the things that came spewing and squishing out of a cow whose just given birth. Subject Number One had become a puddle, brownish red with yellow-green fluid. There were solid things in it too, I saw a ring (which she must have had stuck up her ass by the way, because we search thoroughly for any jewelry) and a tag that said “KEDS”. Moments ago she’d been a living, breathing, probably very regretful human being. Now the totality of Number One’s entire person had been reduced to a filmy puddle suitable for shop-vac-ing. A voice said…

CLEAR!

And the echoes came back. Like always, a little discouraged-sounding at this stage…

Clear…

Clear…

And on my ear-piece:

Clear.

As I spoke I rose from my seat behind the board and headed for the false wall. I met Mueller at the Phone Booth entrance and we stepped in together. Still a steamy heat in there from the incendiary. It took all of 2 minutes to vacuum up the earthly remains of Subject Number One. A clean up team was already staging at the false wall. They had a twenty minute window in which they could clean and disinfect the Booth.