NS | Previous: Night Switch 06.09
Next: Night Switch 06.11
Flak's Avatar

9/26/08 Night Switch 06.10

By Flak | Comments: 11

A little time in extreme situations can change a person a lot.

Marin winced as the men burst out in laughter.

“Don’t try too hard,” breathed one, a wild-looking pale young man with a shaved head and vermillion eyebrows, clutching his sides.

“Most of us are better with English, anyway,” added another, his voice muffled by the Guy Fawkes mask concealing his face.

“Yeah?” asked Marin putting on the least-interested air she could as she tested the strength of her bonds. Laughter died off as the group regained its composure. Marin soon found that she couldn’t escape from the ropes, and stopped straining against them. “So?”

“We saw you on the news, miss,” a tan, black-haired, long-mustached guy answered. “The Demon Girl of Guantánamo! I’m sure we’ll get a good reward for you.”

“Reward for me?” Marin mused absently. She figured that she could escape anytime if she truly needed to, aided by her demonic pets. When she had first had the idea of freeing herself from her prison, it had seemed absurd, but she managed to get by with a little help from her friends. It startled her that there had been news about the escape available to the public, but it wasn’t a problem. Overall, she was not very worried. “Where are we?”

“A beautiful beach near Baracoa,” answered Red Eyebrows, “near the eastern end of Cuba. What’s it to you?”

Marin didn’t answer. She must have drifted over from the ruins of the detention camp. She remembered a stray bit of debris making contact with her head as she made off on the back of a demon, and she didn’t remember much beyond that. Now she had washed up on this beach, and it just happened to be the campsite of some guys bent on carrying out justice. She laughed inside. What luck.

“What luck,” chortled Guy Fawkes. “To think that we were about to set off on another smuggling run, and we just happen to run into a few extra meals.” So much for justice.

“You set your sights too low,” grumbled a heavyset man, balding and wearing mirror shades. “Special special girl like her, worth at least a hundred meals apiece for us. Good meals.”

“Did you say something about smuggling?” Marin asked after deciding that she did in fact wish to ask.

“Indeed I did,” leered Guy Fawkes. Marin of course had no idea whether or not the man behind the mask was leering, but the mask was leering. And it suited the words. “We’re a band of smugglers. We have no common nationality, no useless loyalties, no ambitions… we just give oppressed Americans what they want in return for the money that lets us eat.”

“Noble goal,” commented Marin without blinking an eye.

“It is, huh,” said Guy Fawkes, evidently the group’s most enthusiastic member. Marin made a note to herself: the youngest and least experienced. “We’re in with lots of government types in Florida, they always let us right in when we boat up.”

Marin was genuinely impressed at this last tidbit of information. Criminal activity, within the flawless Establishment bureaucracy? She smiled a little at this, gazing off into the Caribbean as she pondered the possibilities. Perhaps she might find some new allies thanks to these careless smugglers.

NS | Previous: Night Switch 06.09
Next: Night Switch 06.11

NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and addresses are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and have no relation to any actual persons, organizations, or locales.

TrackBack URI Blog Responses (0)

Post a Text Comment Text Comments (11)

  1. AHAHAHAA! GUY FAWKES! Darn if that ain’t the funniest thing I’ve heard all night!

    Alar — 9/26/08 @ 8:33 pm | #Link | Reply

  2. It is pretty amazing how quickly a person can change when granted power to destroy Britannia.
    Flak, you’re letting your revolutionary/terrorist tendencies leak through… casting criminals as the last bastion of freedom in a world where only the communists don’t censor news broadcasts. But even the freedom of the black market needs discipline, which is what Marin’s restraints symbolize. *nodnod*

    spambot — 10/3/08 @ 5:58 pm | #Link | Reply

  3. Since when is Japan communist?! While as funny as ever, your comments seem to be growing less and less incisive…

    Flak — 10/3/08 @ 6:17 pm | #Link | Reply

  4. *scrolls back up the page*
    *confirms that Flak hasn’t _yet_ changed “Cuba” to “Japan”*

    While as Orwellian as ever, your revisionism seems to be growing less and less timely…

    spambot — 10/3/08 @ 6:30 pm | #Link | Reply

  5. I’ve yet to revise anything, you realize! Actually, I fixed a typo in some 04 installment, and I’m in the process of reworking some tags, so that’s not entirely true, but… I don’t revise content!
     
    Also, if Japan and France are the ones broadcasting the footage from Gitmo, I think it’s safe to assume that they’re not censoring their news. I assumed you were talking about those countries.

    Flak — 10/3/08 @ 6:35 pm | #Link | Reply

  6. “Also, if Japan and France are the ones broadcasting the footage”
    Are they? I don’t think that was mentioned. It’s not totally intuitive that they would broadcast such that it could be received in Cuba but not the United States of Gondor, but stranger bison have roamed the Martian tundra.
    Maybe the Establishment outlawed satellite dishes. A shame though, as that really is a nice way to serve bison.

    spambot — 10/3/08 @ 7:16 pm | #Link | Reply

  7. But they DID broadcast it to an American audience. Remember Dorito George telling Joe about it?

    Flak — 10/3/08 @ 7:18 pm | #Link | Reply

  8. Nope, but I’m sure that if I go back to look now it will mysteriously be there.

    spambot — 10/3/08 @ 7:24 pm | #Link | Reply

  9. @spambot: um…
     
    Night Switch 06.08: “dhs should have a field day censoring this crap but apparently france and japan got satellite footage of the demons so there"s no stomping out without more invasions.” - Dorito George, in an e-mail to Joe.
     
    You can say I’m making it up, but I remember discussing it with you at the time! I WON’T LET YOU CALL THAT A LIE!!

    Flak — 10/3/08 @ 7:30 pm | #Link | Reply

  10. Sounds like images recorded by satellites, seen on the internet, as opposed to broadcast by satellites.

    But belaboring this point is extremely tedious and not extremely entertaining, so I shall stop now, and instead go write an episode of TAAoF. Perhaps “Flak vs. the Revisionist Tendencies.” It shall be the shortest episode ever. One line should do. “There was no contest.”

    spambot — 10/3/08 @ 7:52 pm | #Link | Reply

  11. Well, yeah. They might not be broadcasting with satellites… I was thinking more broadcasting via internet. Either way, it reaches everyone with access. And the point is that there are some limits to the Establishment’s reach.

    Flak — 10/3/08 @ 8:09 pm | #Link | Reply

Leave a comment:

If this is your first time commenting, it will not display immediately.
Some XHTML Allowed: <b></b> <i></i> <a href=""></a> <abbr title=""></abbr> <blockquote></blockquote>

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
Valid CSS!
Dreams of the Quill Circle		 some pages may not validate. dotq.org is hosted by godaddy and runs wordpress, phpbb, and pmwiki.
dotq [dreams of the quill] copyright 2005-2009 flak. stealing minds is bad, bad karma.
dotq subscribes to things like stopping spying and awesome open source applications.
DotQ.org Main Site RSS
DotQ.org Comments RSS
DotQ.org Forums RSS