Worlds Within Worlds

I visited a few different planets in a completely different solar system over the later part of the week via a gig with Nike 6.0 producing and hosting web content for the AST Mountain Dew Tour. It was a mission that came via the wire through the head WIT operative at station Flashpoint. I sent a transmission to the host of the assignment, saying that while I was interested in the execution of described target, I would need more info. There was a brief meeting where I met the entire 6.0 unit to go over the task at hand. I took it. I honestly wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into, but I was feeling the call of the Force, and I took the assignment because of the tactical expertise needed and the possible generous bounty. But I knew what I was in for; I was headed for the Floating Palaces of Charm City, home territory, to the Archfiend Overlord, Peter Angelos.

My operation was to do character work for website propaganda under the veil of "promotional content via coverage of said event". I loaded up appropriate disguises, recording devices, bartering and monetary pieces, and headed into my black Pod Stormer last Friday at approximately 8 hours before sundown. I headed North-east for what I trusted to be a grueling execution of inconspicuous adaptation under highly capricious and extremely foreign conditions. As I left the District Galaxy and headed through the ever turbulent Asteroid Beltway into the Floating Palaces of Charm City (Baltimore, Maryland in the Hitchhiker’s Guide), Garmin, my trusty but often mischievous smart-Alec navigator brought me safely into my destination module at M&T Bank Stadium (where I learned that around the beginning of autumn, intergalactic fugitives fight on the customary day of rest for their penance and pardons in the fickle space courts of public opinion).

I found Charm City to hospitable, despite its reputation for a history of sexual pandemics, an uber-Soma like narcotic “heroin”, and the well known interstellar fact that it is the home of Archfiend Overlord Peter Angelos. He is the evil litigious ruler who has enslaved the very popular and peaceful Oriole populace, a birdlike people who have inhabited the land since their initial pilgrimage from St. Louis in 1955. The Oriole people were welcomed with open arms and have enjoyed a very symbiotic relationship with the citizenry of Charm City until Angelos made his way into the nesting grounds. At first he came promising hope and delivered during a short period of time before his internal urges finally took over—now his primary concern is to take in the profits of the Bird people while having sex with them and anyone who is associated with the populace. It is rumored that sexual intercourse through the anal canal is the only way that he can stay sexually stimulated.

The Arch Angelos wooed the people of Charm City in a triumphant battle over the black entity Asbestos, gaining their trust, only to use it against them. He easily crushed a small locally organized phalanx with his powerful whale-sized jowls during, what is now known as, “The Great Face Plant of ‘93” (this event originated the term “face plant” and Angleos has since erected the “Power Plant” on the Harbor its honor). This was the kind of scouting report that early on in my comedic mercenary career that would have had me passing on the offer. Further heightening the stakes was the fact that I would be landing in the very athletic combine owned by Arch Angelos, the Camden Yards Sports Complex. If my reconnaissance was correct, as soon as I would exit my transport Pod Stormer, I would be hounded by Angelo’s grifters and cunning sirens who would try to lure me in with promises of fulfilling fantastical lurid fantasies, only to find myself later enslaved in a giant crotch-less bird suit bent over inside an Angelos skybox, face pressed up against the glass for the better part of 7 innings while being mounted and mocked by Angelos and his demented silk suited minions. The thought alone, prompted me to bring along cyanide capsules just in case I was overpowered in the parking lot.

Upon exiting the Pod Stormer, I took heed of other reports I received about the area and despite his protests, I hid Garmin on the floorboard underneath his protective sheath and out of the view of possible nomadic thieves. But I noticed right off hand that there were some incongruities in my recon from Intel. I was not met by con-artists or narcotic induced sex workers, but instead by helpful attendants, pleasant “hellos” along the skywalk from a multiple of species, and I had an intuitive sense that security was working for the event and not for Angelos. I was surprised by this benevolence and hospitable attitude of the people of Bird land. Yet, I kept a healthy air of caution as I trusted that those Jumbotron screens set about the area were more likely two-sided mirrors with Angelos on just the other-side.

Though I felt far from home, I could always be comforted by what other Merc-colleagues would call a “Death Blossom” of corporate logos from my home planet. It was the Mountain Dew tour but apparently there is some sort of collective enterprise going on with the people of Wendys, Panasonic, Playstation and X-Balm (an extreme lip moisturizer, I think for the intergalactic voyager that expects to be doing most of their footwork on the surface of the sun). Even the communication network NBC, a supposed benevolent system in mainstream attitudes throughout many galaxies, but one that I still hold suspect, they seemed to be flaunting the fact that the very action that was taking place, they owned the rights to; it was very Angelosonian. Our paths, NBC and my own, would collide later on, in an event that put my internal alert status into “Operation Critical”.

However, he was not to be outdone on his own turf, Angelos’ puppet network, MASN, was covering the event as well. However, I think most of their “work” was a façade acting as an extension for his secret police to contain the boarders of Bird Land so that their citizens could not use the cover of the event as a means of escape. It really gave me a sense of what it must be like to travail across the dessert moon rock that is North Korea.

It was a bit disgruntling at times, as sometimes these assignments can act as a vacation away from my home territory but everywhere I walked and surveyed, it was carnival of sorts for these vast commercial enterprises, but I really couldn’t say much, as I was a hired gun for one of the biggest corporate assault teams going and my job was just getting started…