From A Computer, Darkly

I've been trying to post, and I've had a little trouble getting around to it. First, as always, there's the question of volition; maybe it's just the weather, but I've been in a very talkative mood lately, and so volition hasn't been a problem. So what, then, could my problem be?

Something has been in my room, chewing things. First to go was my ethernet cable, which got chewed through sometime before Tuesday night. Then, after Alan agreed to grant me wireless access through his room, I finally got onto Blogger and put a solid hour into a post. I was maybe fifteen minutes off of finishing when Elucubro (my laptop, and a Latin word for "the light by which one writes") got cranky and started complaining about a low battery. Given that I was sitting at my desk, able to visually confirm the power cord's attachment to the computer, I thought this odd. Thrown off by this peculiar turn of events, I decided to close the computer until I could figure out what the problem was. And, in closing El I, by means that I don't fully comprehend, managed to destroy all that I had written.

The power cord had been chewed through, also at some point before I discovered the problem. Being without a second power cord, Elucubro is in a prolonged sleep until I go shell out for another one. So I'm writing from the Artsci computer lab.

This doesn't suit me, I think. I've got my music playing, but I can't ignore : how terribly uncomfortable this chair is; the fact that I'm surrounded by people looking at eBaums world; the keyboard is filthy with the finger-dirt of countless hundreds of students.

After I buy a new power cord this afternoon, I'm going to move my furniture away from the walls and see if I can figure out how the sharp-toothed menace is getting in. If I find the bastard himself, I have every intention of eighty-sixing him, minus one.

-Alfonzo

Guts

It's a feeling from the deepest parts of my intestines; something very wrong has been allowed to happen, and I feel that this is my fault. Or, at least, I'm the only person who could have done anything (Fuck towels. Don't forget to bring a flashlight). Vlad made off with a handcart full of biochemical engineering, to do with as he wishes. If his target is the Food Court in Mallinkrodt, I hope he doesn't hit the wrap station; I'd hate to have to give those up.

In other news... let's see... what other news is there? The door of the DeLorean has shut and we're all rocketing towards Graduation at 88 miles per hour; they've got us planning out our futures before we've even finished our future past. I'm fortunate that the English major, even when combined with a Writing minor, is not particularly difficult to obtain. As long as I don't fail anything, I could graduate early. Only a semester early, but it's nice to know that my hard work and planning (LOLOMGfuckingROFL) have actually expanded my options. I try to think of what I'd do with a semester to myself, and I think I'd probably commit suicide; not in the depressed or self-punitive sort of way, but only because I imagine anyone would kill me if they were trapped alone with me for four months. Thoughts? Comments?

I keep getting Facebook messages from this guy I hung out with last year, back on Beau 2.
Don't seem so surprised to learn that I had a life before Suite 3100. Not everyone finds their prime group of friends right away; even so, looking at the way this year is going with the three Dwarves (Mopey, Stocky and Russky), maybe I switched doors when I should have stayed. Fuck you, Monty Hall. Fuck you, smartest woman in the world.

Maybe I should give ol' Skimmy (the guy from Beau 2, for those of you who can't maintain multiple lines of context) a call, drive to the Steak and Shake instead of walking there (oh, being a Freshman sucked). It's not like I'm, somehow, above my Beaumont floormates, though the same is not true of those fuckers on Beau 1. I swear, if Pre-med classes and food were made available on Beau 1, nobody would ever leave, not even for a fire drill.

-Alfonzo

Cold War

3/9/06
With a little help from my good friend Vladimir, I've infiltrated Monsanto Hall. I've only been inside Monsanto once before, with Alan, to check out the basement entrance to Hilltop Campus' underground tunnel system. The building, itself, is a terrible place that smells of either Ether or very potent alcohol. It is a soulless building, probably as a result of the things that go on inside. I don't know anything for sure, but the building was bought and is funded by Monsanto Chemical, a company which has a less than spotless reputation. I planted my new toy in the dirt of a potted cactus. After class, tomorrow, I will set up camp 150 ft to the South, on the fourth floor of the Psych building. Alan shouldn't miss his ID card in Florida.

3/10/06
Alan's card did the trick, as I'm now safely inside his fabled Rat and Pigeon lab. If not for his stoner's memory (and, consequently, the section of post-it note with his PIN for the lab door, stuck on the front of his ID) I never could have gotten in. I've brought my equipment (camcorder, headphones, reciever) and a week's worth of hummus and chips. The research buildings on campus are too well protected and patrolled for me to risk coming in and out all week; my understanding is that there are motion detectors, and perhaps a few security cameras, and I know that the WUPD keeps records of any ID card swipe.
My cactus cam works! A little wireless spy cam from RadioShack is broadcasting to me across the 150 foot gap between Monsanto and Psych! The box said it had a maximum of 300 ft, and I'm here in the only location available within range! (Excuse my excitement)
Still, there's nothing to see at 6 PM on a Friday. Everyone has gone home for the day, or for the weekend. The R&P lab has an armchair I can sleep in, and from the looks of the cushion, someone of about Alan's weight and girth has slept here on more than one occasion.
I went into the animal holding rooms and met the infamous Rat #85, whose cage has been marked with a black X. I paid my respects.

3/11/06
"What would you like to become, Vladimir?"
"Better."
The mentor and his apprentice started work early today, so I've had a few hours to get up to speed. The abili-compound exists in a functional form, a slightly improved version of what Vlad was exposed to. They are working on similar compounds that enhance more than just the mind, but it does not seem to be going well; a number of test animals have died. Just from listening in, at least 3 rats and a possum have died. It sounds like they're just grabbing animals off the street.
The secondary project is perfecting the delivery of the existing compound. It attaches itself readily to protein, so it seems like meat is the ideal delivery system (notes : the compound has to be added through meat processing, and so most chicken and fish, and basically anything that isn't ground up, doesn't work). Vlad calls this delivery method "unsatisfactory" because of something to do with cooking. Maybe the compound is mostly destroyed when the meat is cooked?

Vlad has been using syringes on himself, but only when he is alone. What is he doing?

3/12/06
Some sort of breakthrough, it sounds like. Vlad had to have a concussion before his brain could reboot. The test animals only need to fall asleep before the abili-compound takes effect. It seems like they've found, or are on the verge of finding a way to trigger the effects in humans without head trauma. There is some talk of human subjects, but that sort of thing should be impossible; there's too much red tape involved with human testing, and it should take years.
They're working on some trigger medium, but there's no mention of what it might be. Maybe another chemical?

8:03 p.m.
Vlad has remained in the lab, several hours after his mentor left. He has injected himself twice, and he's otherwise spent his time watching a TV. The screen is out of view, but the sound is like white noise with short interspersed tones.

3/13/06
The mentor found Vlad asleep in the lab, and there seems to be some tension. Is Vlad doing something in secret, some third project?
I think I underestimated what a week's worth of hummus looks like. I may have to ration the rest to avoid trouble.
1:13 p.m.
Vlad has revealed his secret! A protein which attaches itself to the abili-compound which makes it water-soluble. The mentor seems less than thrilled, or maybe just flustered.
Another rat died in the first project.

3/14/06
I heard footsteps approach the lab door, followed by a sort of fumbling at the door. I grabbed the equipment and ducked into an empty cabinet. Within a few minutes, the door opened and the footsteps entered. They stopped at the center of the room, then moved in the direction of the animal holding room. I wasn't sure if one of Alan's higher-ups had come, or a cop or the janitor or somebody else, so I just crouched and watched Vlad's empty lab. A minute later, the footsteps returned, accompanied by a sort of metal rattle. The main door opened and clicked shut, but I stayed put. Three minutes passed, and Vlad appeared on-screen with a cage in his arms. One of the rat cages. I popped out of the cabinet and ran to the holding rooms. Rat #85, along with his cage, is now gone.

1:36 a.m.
Vlad has added something to #85's water-bottle.
1:45 a.m.
I think he gassed the rat or something. It looked like some sort of gas, and it came out of a hose on his lab bench.
2:10 a.m.
The rat is now out of the cage and acting quite docile on the lab bench. Vlad is speaking to the rat, but I don't think the rat has learned language or anything bizarre like that. It seems more like an endearing thing. Still, isn't this rat supposed to be hell on paws?
3:23 a.m.
After some number of tests, none of which I could see from the cactus, Vlad put the rat back in its cage and left with it. He has not returned to the R&P. If he lets that thing loose in the suite, I'm going to kill him.

9:00 a.m.
Fucking Russians. How does he wake up at 9 on a Tuesday when he was up until 3:30 the night before? I need more sleep than this.

6:51 p.m.
Vlad and his mentor left two hours ago, and now Vlad is back with some girl. Looks like a freshman, but I've never seen her around before. He's brought booze with him.
7:32 p.m.
He drugged her! He got her nice and loose and then he poured something into her drink and damn it, she's drinking it. He turned the TV on and sat her down in front of it. She laughed like a drunk and tried to kiss him, but he moved her head to face the TV again. Same white noise as before, and I still can't see the screen.
7:35 p.m.
She fell over. She fell off the chair she was in and onto the ground. Vlad is bending over her, but I can't see what's going on.
7:37 p.m.
Vlad helped her back into the chair and turned the TV off. She complained of a terrible headache, and Vlad offered to take her home. They left. What the hell did he do to her?

3/15/06
Around noon, Vlad showed up with his freshman floozie on one arm and the rat cage under the other. Vlad showed his mentor something that he taught the rat to do, and Mr. mentor seemed impressed. By the end of this display, the rat was perched on Vlad's shoulder.
He then did some sort of memory task on his floozie, the results of which also seemed to impress the mentor. The floozie gave Vlad a kiss and left, at which point the mentor started shouting about ethics and lawsuits and possible side-effects and death. Vlad said something about Monseiur Broca knocking off a few patients, to which the mentor replied "Unacceptable!"
I hoped that this was the end of the whole project, but my hopes were defeated. They detailed a cover-up, "the girl must never know what has happened," and the mentor left in a huff.
Vlad worked peacefully for the next few hours, occasionally feeding the reformed Rat #85.
I'm officially out of food, and the water cooler in the R&P is getting low. I may have to be hungry for a while.

3/16/06
Nothing outstanding today. No new breakthroughs, no mention of the floozie, and the rat seems to be doing fine. Vlad spent most of the day filling jugs. Maybe his mentor has demoted him, or restricted him to menial tasks or something. It all looks pretty boring.

3/17/06
More of the same, really. Just mixing, stirring, and filling jugs. All of the animals in the first project are dead, having died off throughout the last few days. Vlad was instructed to take the bodies to an incinerator.
I found a bag of peanuts in a drawer in the R&P lab. They've got a fridge, but it's full of Diet Coke.

11:36 p.m.
Vlad came onscreen with a wheeled cart, loaded the jugs onto it, and left. I've been watching out the window of the R&P lab, and he hasn't left Monsanto. There are no lights on on this side of the building.
11:43 p.m.
I called Maggie, who bailed on the last 15 minutes of her shift in the ARC to tell me that no lights are on on the far side of the building. I'm certain he hasn't left the building.
The basement.

3/18/06 (reconstructed from memory)
I grabbed my equipment and made a run for it. I dumped it all into a bush and tried to card into Monsanto; red light. I tried using Alan's card; also red light. I took off across campus, to the manhole beside Louderman. Down into the tunnels, without a flashlight. I couldn't see anything, but I could hear the slow cycle of a squeaky wheel coming from my left. I tried to suss out a path with my hands, only to burn my middle finger on a pipe. Shuffling slowly, I tried to move in the direction of the sound. A voice called out, "Who's there? This area is off-limits!"
I shouted back, "Vlad, I've been watching you. I know everything that you've done and I've come to stop you."
The squeaking wheel stopped. There was silence and darkness, save for the pish of steam and the dripping of water. I shuffled back towards the manhole and burned my elbow a little bit in the process. I climbed back outside and was greeted by flashing lights.
The cops. The fucking cops. I didn't even try to explain it to them. They wouldn't have believed a word of it, and I would have gotten in even deeper shit. In the end, I got off with a warning and a promise that if I was caught trespassing again, yada yada, WUPD-fucking-doo. I collected my equipment from the bush and went back to the suite. I raided the fridge and left Vlad a message on his door. In bloody, reeking ketchup I wrote, "I Will Destroy You."

-Alfonzo

Gal Müeller

For the purpose of review, go back and read the first half of "Collision", and then stop before you read the second half; you don't want to read that again.

So, apparently I was right. I had a shot, opportunity coincided with desire, and I shared a bed for an evening with the intriguing young Freshman girl from Maggie's party. You know, the 17-year-old social mastermind in demi-punk attire, the one you read about when you clicked back just a paragraph ago. You didn't click back? Tsk-tsk.

Gal Müeller. Subconsciously, I've always had a rule against girls of German descent; it's never really come up before, all two times I've been close enough to one to enforce such rules. This third time around, I see how quick I am to abandon my own internal moral caveats. It's pretty much okay, though, because she's Jewish.

Oh, the joys of a Jewish girl. It's always been a secret wish of mine to get involved with a Jewish girl, though I'm not sure why. Their black hair waves at me, too proud to curl outright. Their rich culture wafts to me like baking bread, whispers of "Challah, Mitzvah, Mazel tov". Pale skins take refuge from the sun over a coffee and a conversation,and Woody Allen drools from the corner.

So it finally happened. You may have noticed that I'm being rather ambiguous with regard to the details, and that's no mistake. I won't say anything about the nature of our relations, not for reasons of discretion (when have I ever shown discretion?) but because I don't want to jinx it.

I'll say that the furniture in my room appreciates their additional utility, as well as the scent of more than my ass and sock-feet. I'll say that Johnny-5 appreciates having a regular passenger to shuttle. I'll say that it's better to leave the window open just a little bit, so there's an excuse to cover and curl up. I'll say that getting less sleep never felt this good.

I'm holding my breath for the statement of terms. One of the remarkable things about it is that, so far, no terms of engagement have officially been stated. Perhaps one could call it a marriage of temporal convenience, but that would undermine the spirit of it. There's a genuine spirit of enjoyment, without the sense of expendability that comes along with one-night stands.

I'll be honest! I wasn't expecting anything more than a one-night stand. I counted myself lucky that I'd had that much, and figured I'd just chalk another name up to the past. But when the phone rang on Sunday.... Sunday, for God's sake! Sunday isn't just a throwaway day that you give to anybody, is it? Sunday is the Lord's day (though some guy with a billboard in Georgia thinks something else), after all.

But what does any of that have to do with me? And how can we explain her return the very next day?

No, I won't say any more about it, lest I tempt fate. It's strange to think that the fates have never been on my side before, or I never thought they were before. This "sunniness" lodged in my disposition is covertly integrating itself into me, becoming less of a nuisance with every passing day. Could Gal's appearance mean that there are some benefits to not being stone solemn all the time?

Gal Müeller... it makes the tongue dance. Just follow your tongue when you say it: the back of the tongue touches the back of the roof of your mouth, then the tension slides from the cheeks to close the lips for just a moment, before the tip of the tongue bounces off the alveolar plate. Gal Müeller.


Enough! Before I go, I'll say that I, like Vladimir, will be staying in St. Louis for Spring Break. There's information that needs collecting, and I may have to kill a few people in thr process. Such is the life of an espion, it seems.

-Alfonzo

Placeholder

I'm posting this to make sure that I post tomorrow.

-Alfonzo

Able Young Burgers

The din of evil rings out from the Abili-Burger; there are too many things wrong with this idea, though I'm not sure why; I'm not an ethicist, apparently.

It has a great potential for abuse; imagine American soldiers fed on abili-MREs for strength enhancement, visual acuity or mental prowess. Who's to keep these soldiers from deciding that they're God, or some demigod, and then exacting their wishes on the world? And how do we combat them? With more super-Whoppers, and more mentally deranged men and women?

Worse still, what's to prevent Disadvantageaburgers, designed to lower the metabolism of the consumer and ruin the efficacy of his body? Is there a difference between a posion which kills you outright and a compound that turns your genes against you? Does it matter how the poison works, if it kills you in the end?

And worse still, why does it have to be a burger? Has McDonald's bought MacDonnell Hall? Has the Beef Industry got a steak in this (har har)?

This will never make it past the review boards. No chance in hell.

-Alfonzo

Oh, Post-Scriptum : I recieved one reply to my recent offer from a very kind woman to whom I owe much respect. I'm still thinking about everything she wrote to me, and I hope to reply to her (in private, you voyeurs) by the end of the week. Nobody else has taken me up on my offer, which saddens me. Some may say that they haven't got time to waste coddling some eugenisist college student, but they've obviously got the time to hunt down and frequent an obscure, unpopular blog; I don't see the difference in time commitment, but I do see the difference in emotional commitment.

-Alfonzo ('cause nobody ever minds seeing my name twice)