Why I Hate Ventriloquists

You ever start reminisce about something with your friends, and none of them knows what you’re talking about? You go over all the little details, confident they were right there with you, and then you realize what you thought was a memory was actually a dream?

I had an experience like that the other day, but in reverse.

Ever since Claire and I rescued Gus from the imploding teleporter, it’s been a bit easier for us to hang out. Our schedules don’t match up a lot, but when we do have breaks at the same time, we usually try to eat together. We’ve had a few meals together at this point, and have gotten pretty comfortable talking to each other.

(And I don’t know if this is some kind of PTSD, “new appreciation for life” thing I’ve gained since the accident, but I haven’t been as focused on trying to take things to the next level with her. Right now, it’s cool just hanging out.

(Okay, that and I’m still not sure if she knows I tried to kiss her. And I’m sure as shinola not about to broach that topic just yet.))

So a couple days ago. Claire and I are sitting in the caff, splitting a just-add-water Jumbo Pak of Thai Garlic Noodles for dinner. (Not bad, BTW – check your local Army/Navy Surplus store.)

“Does this lockdown bother you at all?” She suddenly asked, looking at me over her chopsticks.

“Not really,” I said. “I guess it should, huh? Essentially being trapped a half-mile underground … knowing they might turn off the power any second … your life hanging by a thread.”

“Just like Christmas with the family,” she smirked. “But it’s weird, I feel the same way. Like it doesn’t matter if I HUNGRY HUNGRY SO SO HUNGRY.”

I blinked. That was weird. “Here,” I said, pushing the noodles toward her. “I had a big breakfast.”

“Thanks.” She slurped from the bowl. “It’s not like I don’t care if we all die. I just have this feeling that everything SHINY RING? NO! HUNGRY! BAD FOOD HERE!”

“Okay,” I said. “You want me to make something else?”

She frowned. “Why? You don’t like these?”

“No, you don’t like them.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You just said in a caveman voice you didn’t like them!”

“No, I didn’t.” She frowned. “Caveman voice?”

“You said you were hungry, so I gave you the noodles, then you said –“

“ALL BAD. HIDE NOW. FIND FOOD IN DARK TIME.”

“There!” I shouted. “Right there. You said you had to hide!”

“Joe,” Claire replied carefully. “I didn’t say anything.”

I looked around, confirming we were the only ones in the cafeteria. I didn’t have a walkie on me, my Blackberry was turned off, and the comm system –

“Fucking Phildo,” I cursed, going over to the voice panel that was placed near the door of every room in the BP9 bunker. I clicked off the comm connection, confident he wouldn’t be able to prank me again.

I turned back to Claire. “Let’s see him screw with me n—“

“OW! BAD FEELING! BAD BAD BUTT FEELING!”

I had been staring right at Claire when the voice boomed out. And her mouth had been shut tighter than a drum of toxic waster.

“Um,” I began. “You wouldn’t happen to be a ventriloquist, by any chance?”

While she chewed on that one, the voice boomed again. “BAD BUTT BURNING! LAVA PAIN! ANUS FIRE SPRAYING FROM – OHHHHHHHHHHHH.”

“Joe?” I blinked, realizing Claire was jiggling my shoulder. I didn’t remember her walking across the room. “You totally zoned – BETTER NOW. SLEEP UNTIL DARK TIME.”

“You know what?” I said. “I think I need some sleep. I am feeling a little weird.”

“Good idea,” she said, looking concerned. “And if it persists, we’ll have you see Plankton.”

“Great idea. Top notch. Enjoy the rest of your – YES. SLEEP UNDER SHINY RING. You really didn’t hear that just now?” I asked desperately.

“Hear what?” she replied.

“Nothing. Good night.” And I fled back to my room.

Maybe it is post-traumatic stress from the accident. At least, that’s what I’m trying to tell myself. I’m trying because if that’s not the case, then I have to accept the alternative:

Something must have happened to me during the accident.

Date-us Interruptus

Sorry about that. I needed a couple days to process the absurdly bad luck train-wreck that is my romantic life. Here’s what went down:

A couple nights ago, I was cleaning an animal transport cubby after another messy teleportation failure. I was finally starting to get the blood to come off, when Doc Hotness burst into the lab, tears in her eyes.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She cursed, clearly not realizing I was in the back corner. “Why are you so dumb, you dumb, dumb-ass … DUMMY?!” She knocked a stack of computations to the floor. She was about to do the same with a rack of test tubes, when I cleared my throat.

“You’re welcome to throw all the paper you want. But glass is more of a pain to clean up.”

“Shit,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone was here. Sorry.” She scooped up the papers clumsily. “I should go. I have to … work.”

But instead, she sank to the floor, tears in her eyes.

“So it’s going good, huh?”

She laughed bitterly. “If our goal was to explode cute, furry creatures, I’d be a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize.”

I made my way to her side. “You know, I think there’s something to be said for working too hard. When was the last time you were up top?” She looked confused. “You know, on the surface? With the stars? Outside?”

“Oh. Two weeks, I guess. Maybe three?”

“Well, if you haven’t seen Orion’s Belt from the wing of a stealth jet, you haven’t really lived.”

That got a real laugh, and she agreed to take a walk around the airstrip with me. I snagged a bottle of wine from the fridge, met her at the elevator, and we went to the surface.

Area 51 is kind of bleak during the day, but at night, it’s downright pretty. There’s no blazing heat melting the skin off your bones, and the visibility of the stars is amazing.

Doc Hotness (whom I suppose we should now call Claire) and I strolled down the line of parked aircraft, looking up at the stars and taking slugs out of the wine bottle. The night sky was so clear, you could see the spiral arm of the Milky Way.

“I just thought I’d be better at this,” Claire told me. “My whole life, I’ve been able to count on my brain to solve things. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out. If I don’t understand, I’ll break it down into manageable chunks. But this … it’s just a complete ...”

“Clusterfuck?” I suggested.

“Exactly,” she laughed. “We’re implementing technology without knowing the full extent of what it can do, or even how it works.”

“What does Plankton say?” I asked, passing her the bottle.

“Oh, he’s too busy trying to keep the general from pulling the plug on the whole show. The military never thought this was a very viable plan, and if we don’t show some results soon, the whole project’ll be scrapped.”

“But BP9’s in one of the biggest labs at Dreamland. I thought we were a priority.”

“Yeah, right. They stuck us down there because they thought something was going to go wrong, and they wanted the option of sealing us off in case some idiot like me screwed the pooch.”

We climbed up on the wing of a dusty Blackbird Stealth, leaning back and looking up at the sky.

“My dad used to take me up in his planes,” I told her. “And once we’d get up high enough, all the stuff on the ground would become really simple. You know, a tree would become a green dot. A house would become a black square. And up there, it was easy to see where things were.

“Maybe that’s what you need to do,” I said, looking into her blue-grey eyes. “Step back from the problem a little bit. Simplify.”

We were staring at each other in that way where everything else drops out. The stars wheeled overhead. My heart pounded on my ribs like a landlord screaming for the rent. And I must’ve had a severe oxygen depletion in my brain, because I leaned in to kiss her.

Claire leapt to her feet. I toppled over, nearly breaking my nose on the wing of the plane.

“Simplicity!” she shouted, jumping up and down.

The metal wing underneath us creaked ominously. “You know, these might not be entirely up to code,” I informed her.

“Joe, you nailed it!” she yelled, whacking me on the shoulder. “I’ve been looking at the particle stabilization all wrong, trying to compensate for everything little thing. I just need to think globally!”

She hopped to the ground, tossing aside the bottle of wine and running back toward the BP9 hangar.

“It’s two in the morning!” I shouted after her.

“I know!” she crowed back. “Thanks!”

Then she was out of earshot, leaving me alone on the wing of the plane. Even though it was dark, anyone looking would have seen my face burning a bright shade of embarrassment red.

God, I hope she doesn’t realize I tried to kiss her.

Bio-Hazing

Things haven’t been going well.

It’s been about nine days since I got transferred to Black Project #9, and a) I’ve barely had a chance to talk to Doc Hotness, b) I’ve been in the bunker the entire time, and c) being the sole janitor down here is work.

Here’s the problem: because I’m the only clean-up guy, I get called in for everything. And either this team is the clumsiest bunch of eggheads around, or the stuff they’re doing is more accident-prone, because I am getting called constantly. Working above ground might have been boring, but at least it wasn’t physically exhausting.

The first week here, I was busy for at least 18 hours a day. Disinfecting the new lab equipment, making sure the anti-radiation chamber was working properly, getting the incinerator and waste recycler on-line.

On top of that, I had the usual labcoat messes to deal with. Professor Plankton might be an okay guy, but he’s messier than Oscar the Grouch after a bad break-up. Soda cans, half-eaten sandwiches, office supplies – the dude doesn’t know how to pick up anything.

And as the icing on the cake, everyone on BP9 has basically been treating me like a sentient mop. I know labcoats and worker bees aren’t supposed to mix, but a little politeness would be nice. Maybe a “how’s it going, Joe?” or a “I heard it’s 105 on the surface” before you tell me to clean up the piss you sprayed all over the toilet seat.

But the shit didn’t really hit the coolant condenser until last night. I’d finally gotten all my projects under control, and was just settling in to watch a movie. (Upside to working for a top-secret government facility: the video on demand selection is choice.)

Right as Will Smith’s starting to kick alien ass in Independence Day, the sanitation alarm beeped. I checked my computer to see – God dammit – there’s been a dark energy leak in the control room.

Let me tell you something about dark energy. Nobody really knows what it is or how it works, even though it makes up 73% of the universe. But does that stop the military geniuses from fiddling around with it? Does a B-21 Bomber corner like a cement truck?

I’m not up on the specifics, but suffice it to say the nerds figured out how to use dark energy as a power source. An extremely volatile, toxic, unpredictable power source. If the shit comes in contact with regular matter, you basically get annihilation from a sub-atomic level on up. It’s so Darth Vader-scary, most projects at Groom Lake don’t even bother hassling with it. Except, natch, the black projects.

Even though I still have no clue exactly what everyone is doing on BP9 (I’m one of those on a “need to know” basis), I found out the first day that we had the biggest supply of dark energy in the entirety of Paradise Ranch. Which means if there’s a spill, I have that much more chance of having my sub-atomic ass handed to me.

So when I saw the words “dark energy” on my screen, I went into four-alarm overdrive. I pulled on every last bit of my protective gear, filled a push-cart with decontamination devices, and hauled ass through the maze of corridors.

The door of the control room was closed, but I knew that was standard procedure during a leak. I didn’t even bother to try the thumbprint scanner, I just ripped off the scanning plate and used the manual release to open the doors.

I busted inside, finding the entire team sitting calmly at their computers. Thinking they must not know about the leak, I started spraying everyone in reach with sterilizing foam and screaming like a crackhead who’s just broken his only pipe.

I had foamed down one or two underlings before General Hard-Ass took me down with a knee to the kidneys.

“What is your major malfunction, fuckwit?” He yelled, ripping the foam sprayer out of my hands. “We were just about to start our first project test!”

“But … there’s was a dark energy spill,” I stammered. Some of the labcoats started to titter, the soldiers were struggling to hold back smiles, and even Hotness had to cover her mouth.

“You moron,” he spat. “The only dark stuff in here is the shit sliding inside your brains. The DM supply’s behind three feet of steel on the other side of the facility!”

Looking toward the back of the room, I saw Phildo the Dildo smirking triumphantly. Everything fell into place – he must have posted a fake alarm to my computer, purely to get me to make an ass of myself in front of everyone.

“Sorry, sir,” I muttered. “It won’t happen again.”

“That’s right. Because if it does, I’ll pink slip your ass and get some other mop jockey to take over. Now how ‘bout you go scrub some toilets so we can do our work?”

I slunk back to my room, unable to even finish watching the movie because I was so depressed. I avoided the cafeteria for breakfast and lunch today, but sooner or later I’m going to have to see Hotness and explain myself.

I’d love to get out of here for a couple days, but I can’t leave the complex for the next two months unless it’s a medical emergency. It might be worth cutting off a finger just to avoid the embarrassment. Or maybe I could drink bleach and put myself in a coma.

I’ll have to think about it and let you know.

Cast of Characters

It’s been a crazy week.

Where do I start? Right after finding out I was transferred to Black Project 9, some suits pulled me off my shift, and immediately started briefing me on the responsibilities and whatnot of my new job. And friends, if you thought working at regular Area 51 was a hassle, you should see the hoops we have to jump through once you’re on a black project.

Background checks, lie detectors, tox screens, more background checks, equipment protocol lectures, quizzes on emergency procedures, and just to top things off, another background check. I even had a measuring session for a crisp new uniform (though sadly, not at the hands of Doc Hotness).

After four days of this, I was finally taken to Bunker 9 to meet the team. One thing you have to understand about the facilities at Groom Lake – they’re mostly underground. All those buildings you’ve seen in the satellite photos are mostly storage. The real action’s underneath them, and the deeper the facilities, the more dangerous the project.

So I was both excited and concerned when the elevator to my new workplace went down 20 stories into the earth. That’s almost half a mile, people. And that means Yours Truly is now hooked up with some serious shit.

But more on that later. We finally reached the BP9 facility, and I was given the five-cent tour. All black project bunkers are fully self-sustaining, with plenty of food, power, water, and air to last at least 18 months. This is both in case some other mishap occurs at Dreamland (see the previous “orange goop” incident), and if your own lab needs to be locked down.

As learned in my four-day orientation, “lockdown” occurs when there’s any kind of breach in your project. Because the work black project folks do is so secretive and weird, the system is set up to minimize the spread of material, be it information or a flesh-eating chemical gas. Once a lab is locked down, you don’t get out until a) the brass agrees to let you out, or b) everyone’s dead.

With this cheery thought in mind, I was quickly shown the dorms, kitchen, and rec area (complete with private gym), then taken to the main labs of BP9 to meet the staff.

I’ve been told black project teams are a lot like families. You may not have anything in common, but your welfare depends on the health and success of everyone around you. Everyone has a role, and by the end of it, you all want to kill each other.

So keeping the family metaphor in mind, here’s who I’ll be working with for the next 6 to 14 months. NOTE: names have been changed to avoid the NSA hunting me down.

PROFESSOR PLANKTON (50s): Head scientist of BP9, and the mother figure of the team. This project’s his baby, and he’s already put more hours into it than we ever will. Despite the usual distracted egghead personality streak, he seems like a mellow dude. Which is in stark contrast to …

GENERAL HARD-ASS (60s): If Plankton’s mommy, this dude is the sternest, most no-nonsense dad since Darth Vader. Let’s not forget, this is a military installation, so he makes the rules. And trust me, they’re stricter than a Catholic nun. Put it this way: Hard-Ass is the kind of guy who picks his teeth with a Bowie knife instead of a toothpick.

DOC HOTNESS (30s, but could pass for 25): The smart but quirky sister with a heart of gold. She’s got the looks of Zooey Deschanel, the brains of Diane Keaton circa Annie Hall, and the sense of humor of Tina Fey, all merged into one sexy scientist package. I know. God was just showing off when he made her.

PHILDO THE DILDO (20s): The cynical jerk-ass brother figure. Because he keeps the computers working, which in turn keeps us breathing, this dillwad thinks he can be as big a douche as he wants and pretty much get away with it. Which – surprise – he tends to do. Daily.

JOE THE JANITOR (32, me): The black sheep of the family. A plucky young idealist, the only one who really knows what’s up, and a fighting against insurmountable odds to be with the woman of his dreams. Think a more attractive Leonardo DiCaprio. (Okay, so I’m painting a rosy picture of myself. You don’t like it, get your own blog.)

AND THE REST: There are about four other scientists and a half-dozen stone-faced soldiers lurking around. If they become interesting or important, I’ll introduce them later.

But right now, it’s late. I’ll fill you in on the day-to-day next time.

Dating While Classified

Dating at Area 51 is kind of weird.

Besides the whole “office romance” angle, you’ve got to deal with the “summer camp” factor (relationships based on proximity instead of mutual interests), the “collateral damage” factor (you don’t want to get in the sack with someone and find out – whoops! A gene sequencer mishap gave them extra genitals), and most importantly, what I call the “noble/serf” factor.

Because there are only 2000 employees at Dreamland, everyone is broken into small and very hierarchical sub-groups. It’s not just Aircraft versus Weapons Systems; folks are divided by which section they work for, then which level they’re at within that section, then by IQ. So while working for Wormhole Research is cooler than Nano-Computing, a Nano project lead has way more cache than a Wormhole research assistant.

To make things worse, the whole place is divided into Scientists V. Maintenance, and guess which one is ranked lower? Yeah – I’m stuck at one of the only joints in the country where a 90-pound nerd gets more respect than some bruiser who can bench 220.

Because of this, it’s pretty unheard of for anyone from the blue-collar crowd to date a lab coat. It’s frowned upon for us worker bees to even talk to the intellectual elite. In fact, in my two years here, I’ve never seen anyone exchange more than a few sentences with the eggheads. If they spill some shit, we’re called to clean it up, and the relationship ends there.

So there are a few teensy obstacles when a janitor like me gets a crush on a scientist in, wait for it – Black Project 9. For all the crazy projects you see on the shift schedule (Dimensional Physics, Dark Matter Research, and Extra-terrestrial Communication are just some of the highlights), there are 13 “Black Projects,” which even those of us with top-secret security clearance don’t get to know about. And yes, the people who work on those are cooler than Ferris Bueller, while the rest of us are like Chunk from The Goonies.

And of course, the first thing I found out about Hotness is that she’s working on a black project. That makes it tough to even see her, much less try to ask her out. But I’m a new man and shit, so I refused to be deterred. Even the black project folks have to hit the cafeteria, so I staked myself in one corner, mopping and re-mopping the same puddle of Mountain Dew until I saw her walk in.

The first day, I was too frozen to say anything. The second and third day, she was with some other lab coats from her division. But the fourth day, my friends -- the fourth day, I manned up and sat at the other end of her table, lunch tray in hand. (Thankfully, it wasn’t meat loaf day – I heard they sell the leftovers of that as moon rocks).

Here’s a recreation of our earth-shattering conversation, with inner commentary:

ME: Chimichangas, huh?

(God. I need to work on my openings.)

HER: Yeah, well – they were out of Agent Orange.

(Holy crap. Hot AND funny? I gotta step up my game here.)

ME: At least it wasn’t the meat loaf. I heard they carve that out of rocks and sell it on the moon.

(God dammit! Why can’t I ever remember the punchlines to jokes?!)

HER: What?

(Maybe if I change the topic, she won’t notice my stupidity?)

ME: So you just started here?

HER: Yup. Any inside dirt I should know?

ME: Don’t bring in an iPod unless you want a body cavity search.

(Jesus. Am I trying to convince this chick I’m a psycho?)

HER: Good to know. I like to get wild on Fridays.

(Did she just give me an opening? I was happy not to get smacked.)

ME: Um, I was wondering. There’s a screening of The Day the Earth Stood Still at the Crystal Springs drive-in this weekend, and if you’re not on rotation –

(Suddenly appearing out of nowhere --)

PHILDO THE DILDO: Hotness! There’s some kind of (insert dick-swinging techno-babble obviously trying impress her), and we need your expertise.

HER: Okay. (To me.) Enjoy the rest of your lunch.

Then she was gone, my nimrod IT nemesis actually turning back to give me a “That’s right, sucka” smirk. So I’ve clearly got to take things to the next level here. I have to do something that will get Hotness to notice me, something that will prove I’m not just a regular janitor. I need to do something that will BLOW HER MIND.

And I have no idea what that is.

Origin Story, Part Two

The first thing that gets to you about this place is the paperwork.

Forget about the multiple background checks, drug testing, and battery of inoculations I had to go through – it was the frigging paperwork that pissed me off. Once I was cleared for employment, I spent the first week reading and filling out paperwork.

And I’m not talking like a regular work week, I’m talking seven business days. Eight straight hours. Sitting in some windowless over-air-conditioned room, reading text the size of a midget’s pecker and having to initial every. Freaking. Page. By the time I hit Day Six, I was worried I’d have to immediately go on disability because I was going BLIND.

But I got through it with my eyesight relatively intact. I started my illustrious job as an Area 51 janitor, only to discover the paperwork had just begun. Every day, my email inbox was filled with at least 200 new memos, missives, and addendums to stuff that had gone out on previous days. There were updates on security protocols. Suggestions on dealing with bacterial contamination. Even stupid sermons about appropriate workplace behavior.

It would be one thing if you could just blow it off. But if you weren’t up-to-date on the latest directives, your butt would be barbecue before you could say “bubonic plague.” Example: you suit up for a chemical spill, but it turns out the substance has been re-synthesized the night before to eat through reinforced rubber, so you’re on the ground with your bones melting like ice cream, the only condolence you get is: “Didn’t you read the memo?”

So I developed a photographic memory. I’d take a mental snapshot of the latest blabbering email, then scan it for any words that applied to me. “Radioactive,” “flesh-eating,” and “overtime” were always sure signs that my next clean-up would be a little hairy.

After the first couple months, though, I started to get a handle on life at Groom Lake. When there wasn’t some kind of accident or spill, most of my job consisted of keeping the labs tidy. Which, as those of you with scientists in the family will know, was a major freaking job. Not only are these eggheads filthy, but man, they’re forgetful. They’ll knock over a can of Coke, then get all excited about the latest E. Coli orgy and completely forget about the puddle of soda. So by the time Yours Truly shows up, it’s a sticky mass of immovable ass-jizz. One of the only upsides about being a janitor here is that I have access to cleaning products that could take the stains off a skeleton in a tar pit.

In fact, I’d pretty much given up on anything interesting happening in this joint until this morning. I was just finishing a six-day rotation, when I saw a new scientist (let’s call her Doc Hotness) enter the locker room. Unlike the other eggheads, this chick knew how to rock a lab coat. She was like every sexy librarian fantasy you’ve ever had poured into one curvy-creamy package, with cute glasses. She only had to tie her curly hair back in a ponytail, and I was at full attention.

There’s only 2000 or so people who work Homey Airport, so a new arrival is like chum in the water. But before I could even introduce myself to the hot doc, this douchebag IT guy I call Phildo the Dildo gets in her grill and is all, “I’ll give you the tour (slobber, slobber).”

So I’m totally cock-blocked. And the old Joe, he would have just sat back and eaten a full helping of pussy pudding. But no more. I’ve been here almost two years, and I’m sick of crying on the sidelines. It’s time for this QB to get in the game and fuck some shit UP.

So here’s the deal: Hotness and I are working the same rotation five days from now. I am going to finally take charge of my life, get off my ass, and make something happen. I’m gonna grab hold of my balls, and use ‘em for what the Good Lord intended:

I am going to ask out Doc Hotness.