Q Report; The Negotiation with the “The Great Betrayer“, Viking-King Brett Farve.
Q Report Follows.
To: Guild Council, Members, Et All.
From: Agent Q [K-00]
10-07-15, Saint Paul.
The negotiation was a long time in coming. I had been trying to get an interview with Farve since ‘09 when he turned. There were several unsuccessful attempts at getting him to a court of law. Headlines like “Brett Farve Rapes State of Ohio” and “Farve Attempts to Hijack Air Force 1, President Dead” met with fabulous internet hits, but when it came right down to it Farve, and his legal team, thought it prudent not to press charges of libel and chance getting their boy within microphone distance of Agent Q. Of course, back in ‘09 I wasn’t even an anarchist popular figure. Merely an art geek running below the radar. As such, it was difficult to get Brett on the phone. Working a different angle I called in a favor to the Weinsteins to pitch any one of three scripts I had awaiting production capital. Titles;
Swordball; Battle for the Humphrey [An action picture that was meant to set the stage for a Guild Sponsored Future Sport]
Farvestuvius; Slave-Born Roman-Fighter [A costume piece that would make Spartacus look like Spamalot.]
Bretticus; Norse Barbarian of the Future [More or less a reason to get Farve surrounded by Future Vikings. The History Channel had already optioned it as a Christmas ‘2127 release.]
Alas, the Weinsteins were too busy keeping Quentin in blow and women. Then the globe collapsed. From the Archive, an early account of the militarizing of the NFL;
“When the globe collapsed there were very few prepared for the insanity. The projections were in, and after California sunk it was all a question of how much of the American Breadbasket would survive before salination wiped out the last of the freshwater reserves. There were just enough survivors wandering around America to band together. The NFL was something familiar and archetypal. Whole sports teams took over coliseums and set about training men. When the raiding began it was a horrifying series of the most amazingly stupid battles ever waged between desperate swarms of humanity.
Some of the NFL teams were obvious. The Buccaneers took to the Florida keys, swamping and buggering anyone foolish enough to try fishing. The Oakland Raiders rallied at the waterline and began their assault at the salvageable west coast islands. But what of the Seahawks? What of the Panthers? Most teams became totems to insane cults praying to old footage of John Madden. The Jungian titillation of throwing away illusions of survival and joining up with a team caused swarms of survivors to rally and assault.”
Minnesota was no different. Fate had it that their leader would be Farve. The Great Betrayer. It is said among his detractors that when [if?] Farve dies, Satan will spit out Judas and start chewing on Farve like a big purple piece of bubble yum. The North Dakota raids were the umbrella to any number of battles over control of the Red River. Long boats were loaded with men and provisions near the former Canadian border. Loaded with light beer and armed with hand axes and long rifles, the initial wave of Minnesotan Vikings, championed by their leader Brett Farve, visited on the people of North Dakota some of the cruelest and inhumane punishments known since the dark ages.
Grand Forks was taken without much issue. The Air Force base there had been evacuated en masse to an unknown location and never returned. The dazed populace, in the early stages of assessing their sustainability, was ill prepared for grown men in white-tail-horned helmets and deer-leather hides kicking down their door and demanding their canned goods and women. The sack was complete in under a day, and loading their riches on land convoys bound for Itasca, they then set their eyes on Fargo.
The tenuous peace between Fargo and Moorhead was one that had lasted decades. When word of the Vikings made it’s way downstream in the form of headless corpses and Coors Light cans, the residents of both cities prayed to their Gods for mercy. A prayer created hundreds of years earlier served well;
“From the wrath of the Norsemen, oh Lord, deliver us.”
The prayers were on both sides of the river, but those unfortunate enough to be on the west shore went unanswered. A wave of purple rocked the city, and with Fargo taken, The Red River of the North was theirs. The Headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi were under lock and key. Dams had been blown and bridges torn down to create a river-lane that connected the game rich north to the metropolitan south. Farve had led his men to total control of his domain and rested on his laurels, safe in his MetroDome from the ill will of his conquered land. This was all within a three year time when everyone left on planet was busy wondering how turbines really worked and how to make fresh water. The Twin Cities, and indeed Greater Minnesota, were Farves. As far as anyone could tell, he was poised to take over middle America.
Of course the Guild could not brook this totalitarianism. Aside from the obvious problems inherent to a despotic post-apocalypse War God controlling so much, most of the Guild Council held personal grudges against the man who had, for so many years, remained the enemy of Minnesota and it’s fans. The Solstice Duello established and secured the councils unanimous decision to take firm action. An agent would be elected to form a team to penetrate the MetroDome, find Farve, and deliver terms.
Only a zero agent would do, and after a game cheating at straws, I was assigned a strike team and given tactical control over the insertion. The terms were Farves unconditional abdication as Viking King, the disarming of the Minnesota Vikings, and an end to barbaric violence being performed daily in any one of a hundred cities. Our bargaining chips were few, but the cloak and dagger boys gave us an optimistic 10% survival/success rate based on the Guild's initial intelligence on the MetroDome.
For my strike team I recruited an elite group from Ninja House. My hope was to avoid combat if at all possible. Camouflage and subterfuge would be our tools as we made our way through progressively more difficult theaters of operation. Then, once Farve was in sight, it would be too late for him. Every Agent was equipped with a mass-suicide vest and enough explosives to destroy the evidence, if not ruin Farves day. I would be the only swordsman on the mission. I took The Musashi, knowing it would more than likely be our last trip. Asside from this we took only enough drugs, pornography, and ammunition to bribe our way to the King.
Our insertion into the Twin Cities would come by way of a river boat, chartered from Bemidji. Farve thought he had built the only clutch of swordsmen in America. He would never see the Guild coming. Late Fall in Northern Minnesota is a magical thing. It can chill you to the bone and the wind can sting you worse than a scorned lover, but there’s something in the air better than any drug. The Mississippi was black and cold as we wound our way south. To his credit, blowing up everything that would stop a river highway was a cool move. Farve was a tyrant, but he was a genius as well. He knew how to win, and in the end everything breaks down to one game or another.
It took about a day to get to The Cities. At that point it was a simple matter of blending. The fasion for the area was skin. Dead animal skin. For the more serious warriors, the unmistakable leather of human-turned-coat was a disturbing, but not unpredicted spectacle. Scalping had returned to acceptable behavior in a big way. At every street corner a berserker. In every tavern a clan of Norsemen drinking mugs of Grain Belt and Pabst. From the skyline of Minneapolis hung the bodies of the conquered. Where once stood a bastion for Art and Industry, now remained the drunken breeders. The survivors cruel enough to take up arms. And man alive… there were a lot of them.
Our disguises seemed to work well. I was bedecked in wolf skin, the ninja in bear. All rugs and taxidermy of course, sewn together from science centers and sporting goods stores. The locals spoke with thick Wisconsin accents. Perhaps in reverence to their Missouri born king… perhaps out of confusion. They were nice enough, of course. Just because you’re a barbarian doesn’t mean you have to be impolite. A preliminary scan of the area revealed a substantial infrastructure in place. Off site power facilities gave the municipality enough energy to keep lights and, more important, heat running in large facilities where clans would congregate to feast and breed. They always gave reverence to King Farve and his Lordly Wisdom when mentioning these fantastical amenities.
Our ticket in started at the Mall of Norse-America. Formerly a super-retail-complex the building was a massive plaza of vendors of everything from guns to slaves. Anything a human could desire, and many things they should not, could all be found under one snow less roof. Slave galleys of the captured worked massive turbines by hand and feet in the maintenance rooms bellow to ensure that it was always 72 and sunny in the Norse-America Mall. So very many troll vendors. You could buy yourself a blade, a ham-leg, and a woman for under 10 rounds, and that’s not bad. Or rather it is everything that is wrong about this sick and decaying world.
I pressed a pimp for some information about how to get a try out for The King’s Guard. I played a story out about my prowess with the blade. How I had just missed the Invasion of Minot. Dropping legitimate clues that I was a bad-ass and daring him to test me. The pimp folded like paper money and with the ready exchange of some hard drugs he was in my pocket. The key to getting into the Dome, he said, was the Light Rail. Sure. Of course. It would be. I left the pimp to his drugs and let the men in on the plan.
The Plan did not work. I’ll just get that right out there. I’m not even going to detail it in this report. It was ridiculous. Banking on too much without credit. Long story short, we were captured. Everyone. It was one of those situations you never want to find yourself in. One minute you think everything is going great, you’re going to win, and the next you find your entire team surrounded by pikemen. Pikes are the worst. Nothing you can do but get stabbed to death when you’re surrounded by them. Have to surrender and trust in the team refraining from activating their suicide vests.
The Suicide Vest is an interesting little device designed by the Guild when it became evident that too many agents were dying unnecessarily. Pacifist Aggression is the official Guild Policy, but a person can only leverage their lives as worth something if they have the potential to kill everyone else within a 50 yard radius [depending on wind]. A throat collar maintains a record of heart rate and blood pressure and feeds this information to the vest. The garment itself is nothing more than several pressurized cans on a snappy looking black vest. These cans contain a nerve toxin that promises an unpleasant pants-pooping, eye-bleeding death to anyone foolish enough to kill you.
In a team setting such a vest is just asking for trouble. The Pikemen released us to the New Verangian Guard and I was the first to point out the suicide vests and explain their purpose. With an 11 man team sequentially dying and exploding with poisonous gas it was assured that everyone in the Mall of Norse-America would die. Jared Allen was called. It was then I got worried. The 69 was said to have been burned into over a thousand men women and children who were charged with maintaining the Allen estate.
Jared Allen is not a man I had wanted to meet. The Collapse had taken it’s toll on the sanity of that poor man, and in return for command of the Verangian Guard, Jared had done some very unpleasant things to some very nice people. Footage smuggled north from the local access public execution station had produced a horrifying series of Jared Allen run Executions. The Red Eagle was his specialty. It is an old Norse torture-murder where the lungs are carved out of the rib cage. It’s something that horrifies without actually seeing anything. The mind unconsciously begins working out the anatomy of the event and the NOT knowing becomes even more horrifying than the act. Or so I thought. Until I saw Jared Allen perform it.
When Jared arrived on scene a Pretorian explained about the suicide vest. Fear quickly turned into respect, and after I explained I was a messenger, Jared allowed me to begin record of the negotiation. The transcript is as follows;
[Begin Transcript.]
Q. We’re hot.
JA. So, I can just bet who your message is for.
[Laughter.]
Q. Yeah, my words are for Farve alone.
[Sound of slapping.]
JA. Guard your tongue slave. He is Your Majesty or King Farve to the likes of you.
[Sound of spitting, followed by gasping.]
Q. DO YOU SEE THAT I AM A SAMURAI!!!?!?!?
[Sounds of struggle.]
JA. Stop! Leave him be. He may be a fighter. Your message will be delivered in time Swashbuckler. But I have a few questions of my own.
Q. Sure! Sure. Hit me, what?
JA. Have you heard of Swordball?
Q. What?
JA. Swordball. Have you heard of it?
Q. Yeah… yeah, I have.
JA. Then you are a fighter?
Q. Swordball never happened. It was a Guild Future Sport that never got time to take off.
[Sounds of Laughter]
JA. You witless fool. It’s happening now. Can you not hear the cheers?
Q. I do. I do hear the cheers.
JA. It is the Swordball championship. Tell me, are you an Agent of the Guild?
Q. I am.
JA. And your rating?
Q . Zero Agent.
[End Transcript]
Then Jared Allen hit me so hard I fell unconscious. And that takes a lot. That is one big guy. Fast too. The other members of my team were actually gushing over how swiftly he hog tied me afterwards. I woke up in a holding cell some time later and they would not stop going on about it. Everyone had their vests disarmed and removed while I was out. Damned clever bastards just tied a few cinder blocks to the vest and dropped us to the bottom of the shark tank. The choice was to disarm and remove the vest or die and set it off for nothing. The aquarium was enclosed to ensure that only a handful of guard would be taken with us. With me too unconscious to order an abort, the mission still a go.
I cursed myself for choosing a ninja team. You want to know the use of a captured ninja? Less than a rat in a flaming tampon factory. At this point I figured it was a torture broadcast for the lot of us. I was armed only with my pants and shirt. They even took my belt. Some time later a guard came for me and me alone. I gave the men a nod of support and followed. As I left the holding cells I could hear it. The roar of the MetroDome. I was ushered into the rear entrance, reserved entirely for Farve and his guard. Several hallways later and I was there. In a luxury box with The Great Betrayer, Viking-King Brett Farve. Damn it he looked good. Old, of course, but good. He had stopped fighting the beard and let it grow in grey and proud. Despite the age that combat and horror had visited on his face, there was a childlike enthusiasm to his gaze when I entered the room.
“Hey Man! How’s it going?” he said.
I saw that my personal effects were on a table near the shmorgasboard and asked to record the negotiation. He laughed and agreed.
[Begin Negotiation Transcript.]
BF. This how you turn it on?
Q. That will be fine, yes.
BF. Why don’t you take a seat big guy, we’ve got a lot to talk about.
Q. We certainly do.
BF. Before we begin, I’d like to show you something. Here, look out there.
Q. It’s… it’s Swordball.
BF. Sure is! It sure is Quaddle!
Q. That name has no meaning to me anymore.
BF. Oh, right! You are just Agent Q now, right?
Q. How do you know so much about me?
BF. Swordball man!! I read it! Had to be back in… oh golly… ‘09?
Q. Wait… you read that?
BF. Sure did! Loved it!
Q. Then why didn’t you call me back!? I was living in poverty you hick!
BF. Guard, go ahead and rough Q up a little for me will you?
[Sounds of savage beating.]
BF. Now look, Q, I like you. I like your work. I obviously like Swordball. But what I don’t like, is people disrespecting me. Not anymore, Q. I put up with a lot of angry people saying some pretty awful stuff in ‘09. I just don’t put up with it anymore. Don’t have to. Have my own Viking Army man! How crazy is that? And they are GOOOOOOOOD! Good men. That guy that just roughed you up? He’s new! This is only like, his first week on the guard! How old you think he is?
Q. 25?
BF. Close! 21! He’s 21. Been training hard since 18 to get a tryout for the guard, and last week he made it. Got his own number 4. If he keeps this up we’ll brand a 69 on him too and see what magic Jared can work with him. He’s just one of thousands. Thousands of Vikings man! I’ve got them everywhere! This dome alone houses 50,000 men with their families! That’s like… five times the population of any city left in the north woods! And you were sent here to negotiate? You and your little ninja? You think a single zero agent and a strike team is going to even worry me? With the suicide vests? That’s old news, Q! I’ve been running counter intelligence on your Guild for years! Years man! I got Swordball in the mail, and I was like; Yes. This is how to build an army of swordsmen. And then I’ll just make them obey me, and then we’ll just take over the whole works. Couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.
Q. But… Swordball was never meant to be used-
BF. To kill? Who are you kidding, Q? It’s men, with swords, fighting on a field.
Q. But with armor, and technique.
BF. Ah yes, Swashbuckler’s Rules of Engagement? Brilliant. For training. But you can’t make a martial art and then not expect people to kill with it. You just can’t. Look at Van Damme.
Q. I will not.
BF. Whatever, Q. I’m going to execute your team, OK? Let’s just get that out of the way. How are they with swords?
Q. NO! They’re ninja! They only carry the swords for looks! You bastard, if you kill me team the negotiation is off!
BF. Oh yeah! Yeah! You’re a negotiator!
[Sound of laughter (maniacal)]
BF. Well what do you have to threaten me with, Q?! What have you got that’s going to make me not kill you?!
Q. Beginning in Lake Bemidji, and running the length of the Mississippi, there are a series of cargo containers packed with cyanide-bicarbonate set to kill everyone and everything in Minnesota within a week.
BF. … do not.
Q. If you do not command your men to disarm, sign a lasting peace accord with the Guild, and abdicate your throne we will trigger the bombs. If I do not report back within a very tight time frame, we trigger the bombs. There are deep cover agents reporting the activity here, and they may have triggered them already, thinking me dead.
BF. Uh uh.
Q. Yes, Brett, Yes. You have to quit being king, or everyone is going to die. The Guild will not tolerate this barbarism. If we are to survive there must be peace among survivors. If survival of all is not an option, then the Guild will decide who will survive and who will not. Everything down river will waste away. From Itasca to the Delta, our scientists assure us, within less than 1% variation, that America will have no survivors.
BF. But that doesn’t make any sense, Q! Why kill everyone just because of me?
Q. Because slaves and rape do not a society make.
BF. What if I just commanded everyone to stop that?
Q. The terms are set.
BF. Awww… man. What am I supposed to do then? Retire?
Q. The Guild has arranged a palatial estate on Lake Bemidji.
BF. Can I keep my slaves?
Q. No, Brett. No you cannot. You can hire them after you emancipate them, and it will be close to the same thing, but no. You can’t just tell people they are slaves.
BF. We’re going to have to close the mall…
Q. Our Agents can make everything sustainable.
BF. Really?
Q. Really.
BF. OK. OK. Well. Shucks. Guess I better tell the people then…
Q. And I want my sword back.
[End Negotiation Transcript.]
He didn’t take it as bad as I would have expected. You tell a Roman they’re going into exile, they are likely to knife themselves in the bath. For Farve, retirement was a long way in coming. He delivered his retirement speech and ordered his men to stand down. He has been moved to the facility in Bemidji, and I am awaiting further orders. Mission accomplished.
Willfully Submitted,
Q.P. Quaddle
Agent K-00
To: Guild Council, Members, Et All.
From: Agent Q [K-00]
10-07-15, Saint Paul.
The negotiation was a long time in coming. I had been trying to get an interview with Farve since ‘09 when he turned. There were several unsuccessful attempts at getting him to a court of law. Headlines like “Brett Farve Rapes State of Ohio” and “Farve Attempts to Hijack Air Force 1, President Dead” met with fabulous internet hits, but when it came right down to it Farve, and his legal team, thought it prudent not to press charges of libel and chance getting their boy within microphone distance of Agent Q. Of course, back in ‘09 I wasn’t even an anarchist popular figure. Merely an art geek running below the radar. As such, it was difficult to get Brett on the phone. Working a different angle I called in a favor to the Weinsteins to pitch any one of three scripts I had awaiting production capital. Titles;
Swordball; Battle for the Humphrey [An action picture that was meant to set the stage for a Guild Sponsored Future Sport]
Farvestuvius; Slave-Born Roman-Fighter [A costume piece that would make Spartacus look like Spamalot.]
Bretticus; Norse Barbarian of the Future [More or less a reason to get Farve surrounded by Future Vikings. The History Channel had already optioned it as a Christmas ‘2127 release.]
Alas, the Weinsteins were too busy keeping Quentin in blow and women. Then the globe collapsed. From the Archive, an early account of the militarizing of the NFL;
“When the globe collapsed there were very few prepared for the insanity. The projections were in, and after California sunk it was all a question of how much of the American Breadbasket would survive before salination wiped out the last of the freshwater reserves. There were just enough survivors wandering around America to band together. The NFL was something familiar and archetypal. Whole sports teams took over coliseums and set about training men. When the raiding began it was a horrifying series of the most amazingly stupid battles ever waged between desperate swarms of humanity.
Some of the NFL teams were obvious. The Buccaneers took to the Florida keys, swamping and buggering anyone foolish enough to try fishing. The Oakland Raiders rallied at the waterline and began their assault at the salvageable west coast islands. But what of the Seahawks? What of the Panthers? Most teams became totems to insane cults praying to old footage of John Madden. The Jungian titillation of throwing away illusions of survival and joining up with a team caused swarms of survivors to rally and assault.”
Minnesota was no different. Fate had it that their leader would be Farve. The Great Betrayer. It is said among his detractors that when [if?] Farve dies, Satan will spit out Judas and start chewing on Farve like a big purple piece of bubble yum. The North Dakota raids were the umbrella to any number of battles over control of the Red River. Long boats were loaded with men and provisions near the former Canadian border. Loaded with light beer and armed with hand axes and long rifles, the initial wave of Minnesotan Vikings, championed by their leader Brett Farve, visited on the people of North Dakota some of the cruelest and inhumane punishments known since the dark ages.
Grand Forks was taken without much issue. The Air Force base there had been evacuated en masse to an unknown location and never returned. The dazed populace, in the early stages of assessing their sustainability, was ill prepared for grown men in white-tail-horned helmets and deer-leather hides kicking down their door and demanding their canned goods and women. The sack was complete in under a day, and loading their riches on land convoys bound for Itasca, they then set their eyes on Fargo.
The tenuous peace between Fargo and Moorhead was one that had lasted decades. When word of the Vikings made it’s way downstream in the form of headless corpses and Coors Light cans, the residents of both cities prayed to their Gods for mercy. A prayer created hundreds of years earlier served well;
“From the wrath of the Norsemen, oh Lord, deliver us.”
The prayers were on both sides of the river, but those unfortunate enough to be on the west shore went unanswered. A wave of purple rocked the city, and with Fargo taken, The Red River of the North was theirs. The Headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi were under lock and key. Dams had been blown and bridges torn down to create a river-lane that connected the game rich north to the metropolitan south. Farve had led his men to total control of his domain and rested on his laurels, safe in his MetroDome from the ill will of his conquered land. This was all within a three year time when everyone left on planet was busy wondering how turbines really worked and how to make fresh water. The Twin Cities, and indeed Greater Minnesota, were Farves. As far as anyone could tell, he was poised to take over middle America.
Of course the Guild could not brook this totalitarianism. Aside from the obvious problems inherent to a despotic post-apocalypse War God controlling so much, most of the Guild Council held personal grudges against the man who had, for so many years, remained the enemy of Minnesota and it’s fans. The Solstice Duello established and secured the councils unanimous decision to take firm action. An agent would be elected to form a team to penetrate the MetroDome, find Farve, and deliver terms.
Only a zero agent would do, and after a game cheating at straws, I was assigned a strike team and given tactical control over the insertion. The terms were Farves unconditional abdication as Viking King, the disarming of the Minnesota Vikings, and an end to barbaric violence being performed daily in any one of a hundred cities. Our bargaining chips were few, but the cloak and dagger boys gave us an optimistic 10% survival/success rate based on the Guild's initial intelligence on the MetroDome.
For my strike team I recruited an elite group from Ninja House. My hope was to avoid combat if at all possible. Camouflage and subterfuge would be our tools as we made our way through progressively more difficult theaters of operation. Then, once Farve was in sight, it would be too late for him. Every Agent was equipped with a mass-suicide vest and enough explosives to destroy the evidence, if not ruin Farves day. I would be the only swordsman on the mission. I took The Musashi, knowing it would more than likely be our last trip. Asside from this we took only enough drugs, pornography, and ammunition to bribe our way to the King.
Our insertion into the Twin Cities would come by way of a river boat, chartered from Bemidji. Farve thought he had built the only clutch of swordsmen in America. He would never see the Guild coming. Late Fall in Northern Minnesota is a magical thing. It can chill you to the bone and the wind can sting you worse than a scorned lover, but there’s something in the air better than any drug. The Mississippi was black and cold as we wound our way south. To his credit, blowing up everything that would stop a river highway was a cool move. Farve was a tyrant, but he was a genius as well. He knew how to win, and in the end everything breaks down to one game or another.
It took about a day to get to The Cities. At that point it was a simple matter of blending. The fasion for the area was skin. Dead animal skin. For the more serious warriors, the unmistakable leather of human-turned-coat was a disturbing, but not unpredicted spectacle. Scalping had returned to acceptable behavior in a big way. At every street corner a berserker. In every tavern a clan of Norsemen drinking mugs of Grain Belt and Pabst. From the skyline of Minneapolis hung the bodies of the conquered. Where once stood a bastion for Art and Industry, now remained the drunken breeders. The survivors cruel enough to take up arms. And man alive… there were a lot of them.
Our disguises seemed to work well. I was bedecked in wolf skin, the ninja in bear. All rugs and taxidermy of course, sewn together from science centers and sporting goods stores. The locals spoke with thick Wisconsin accents. Perhaps in reverence to their Missouri born king… perhaps out of confusion. They were nice enough, of course. Just because you’re a barbarian doesn’t mean you have to be impolite. A preliminary scan of the area revealed a substantial infrastructure in place. Off site power facilities gave the municipality enough energy to keep lights and, more important, heat running in large facilities where clans would congregate to feast and breed. They always gave reverence to King Farve and his Lordly Wisdom when mentioning these fantastical amenities.
Our ticket in started at the Mall of Norse-America. Formerly a super-retail-complex the building was a massive plaza of vendors of everything from guns to slaves. Anything a human could desire, and many things they should not, could all be found under one snow less roof. Slave galleys of the captured worked massive turbines by hand and feet in the maintenance rooms bellow to ensure that it was always 72 and sunny in the Norse-America Mall. So very many troll vendors. You could buy yourself a blade, a ham-leg, and a woman for under 10 rounds, and that’s not bad. Or rather it is everything that is wrong about this sick and decaying world.
I pressed a pimp for some information about how to get a try out for The King’s Guard. I played a story out about my prowess with the blade. How I had just missed the Invasion of Minot. Dropping legitimate clues that I was a bad-ass and daring him to test me. The pimp folded like paper money and with the ready exchange of some hard drugs he was in my pocket. The key to getting into the Dome, he said, was the Light Rail. Sure. Of course. It would be. I left the pimp to his drugs and let the men in on the plan.
The Plan did not work. I’ll just get that right out there. I’m not even going to detail it in this report. It was ridiculous. Banking on too much without credit. Long story short, we were captured. Everyone. It was one of those situations you never want to find yourself in. One minute you think everything is going great, you’re going to win, and the next you find your entire team surrounded by pikemen. Pikes are the worst. Nothing you can do but get stabbed to death when you’re surrounded by them. Have to surrender and trust in the team refraining from activating their suicide vests.
The Suicide Vest is an interesting little device designed by the Guild when it became evident that too many agents were dying unnecessarily. Pacifist Aggression is the official Guild Policy, but a person can only leverage their lives as worth something if they have the potential to kill everyone else within a 50 yard radius [depending on wind]. A throat collar maintains a record of heart rate and blood pressure and feeds this information to the vest. The garment itself is nothing more than several pressurized cans on a snappy looking black vest. These cans contain a nerve toxin that promises an unpleasant pants-pooping, eye-bleeding death to anyone foolish enough to kill you.
In a team setting such a vest is just asking for trouble. The Pikemen released us to the New Verangian Guard and I was the first to point out the suicide vests and explain their purpose. With an 11 man team sequentially dying and exploding with poisonous gas it was assured that everyone in the Mall of Norse-America would die. Jared Allen was called. It was then I got worried. The 69 was said to have been burned into over a thousand men women and children who were charged with maintaining the Allen estate.
Jared Allen is not a man I had wanted to meet. The Collapse had taken it’s toll on the sanity of that poor man, and in return for command of the Verangian Guard, Jared had done some very unpleasant things to some very nice people. Footage smuggled north from the local access public execution station had produced a horrifying series of Jared Allen run Executions. The Red Eagle was his specialty. It is an old Norse torture-murder where the lungs are carved out of the rib cage. It’s something that horrifies without actually seeing anything. The mind unconsciously begins working out the anatomy of the event and the NOT knowing becomes even more horrifying than the act. Or so I thought. Until I saw Jared Allen perform it.
When Jared arrived on scene a Pretorian explained about the suicide vest. Fear quickly turned into respect, and after I explained I was a messenger, Jared allowed me to begin record of the negotiation. The transcript is as follows;
[Begin Transcript.]
Q. We’re hot.
JA. So, I can just bet who your message is for.
[Laughter.]
Q. Yeah, my words are for Farve alone.
[Sound of slapping.]
JA. Guard your tongue slave. He is Your Majesty or King Farve to the likes of you.
[Sound of spitting, followed by gasping.]
Q. DO YOU SEE THAT I AM A SAMURAI!!!?!?!?
[Sounds of struggle.]
JA. Stop! Leave him be. He may be a fighter. Your message will be delivered in time Swashbuckler. But I have a few questions of my own.
Q. Sure! Sure. Hit me, what?
JA. Have you heard of Swordball?
Q. What?
JA. Swordball. Have you heard of it?
Q. Yeah… yeah, I have.
JA. Then you are a fighter?
Q. Swordball never happened. It was a Guild Future Sport that never got time to take off.
[Sounds of Laughter]
JA. You witless fool. It’s happening now. Can you not hear the cheers?
Q. I do. I do hear the cheers.
JA. It is the Swordball championship. Tell me, are you an Agent of the Guild?
Q. I am.
JA. And your rating?
Q . Zero Agent.
[End Transcript]
Then Jared Allen hit me so hard I fell unconscious. And that takes a lot. That is one big guy. Fast too. The other members of my team were actually gushing over how swiftly he hog tied me afterwards. I woke up in a holding cell some time later and they would not stop going on about it. Everyone had their vests disarmed and removed while I was out. Damned clever bastards just tied a few cinder blocks to the vest and dropped us to the bottom of the shark tank. The choice was to disarm and remove the vest or die and set it off for nothing. The aquarium was enclosed to ensure that only a handful of guard would be taken with us. With me too unconscious to order an abort, the mission still a go.
I cursed myself for choosing a ninja team. You want to know the use of a captured ninja? Less than a rat in a flaming tampon factory. At this point I figured it was a torture broadcast for the lot of us. I was armed only with my pants and shirt. They even took my belt. Some time later a guard came for me and me alone. I gave the men a nod of support and followed. As I left the holding cells I could hear it. The roar of the MetroDome. I was ushered into the rear entrance, reserved entirely for Farve and his guard. Several hallways later and I was there. In a luxury box with The Great Betrayer, Viking-King Brett Farve. Damn it he looked good. Old, of course, but good. He had stopped fighting the beard and let it grow in grey and proud. Despite the age that combat and horror had visited on his face, there was a childlike enthusiasm to his gaze when I entered the room.
“Hey Man! How’s it going?” he said.
I saw that my personal effects were on a table near the shmorgasboard and asked to record the negotiation. He laughed and agreed.
[Begin Negotiation Transcript.]
BF. This how you turn it on?
Q. That will be fine, yes.
BF. Why don’t you take a seat big guy, we’ve got a lot to talk about.
Q. We certainly do.
BF. Before we begin, I’d like to show you something. Here, look out there.
Q. It’s… it’s Swordball.
BF. Sure is! It sure is Quaddle!
Q. That name has no meaning to me anymore.
BF. Oh, right! You are just Agent Q now, right?
Q. How do you know so much about me?
BF. Swordball man!! I read it! Had to be back in… oh golly… ‘09?
Q. Wait… you read that?
BF. Sure did! Loved it!
Q. Then why didn’t you call me back!? I was living in poverty you hick!
BF. Guard, go ahead and rough Q up a little for me will you?
[Sounds of savage beating.]
BF. Now look, Q, I like you. I like your work. I obviously like Swordball. But what I don’t like, is people disrespecting me. Not anymore, Q. I put up with a lot of angry people saying some pretty awful stuff in ‘09. I just don’t put up with it anymore. Don’t have to. Have my own Viking Army man! How crazy is that? And they are GOOOOOOOOD! Good men. That guy that just roughed you up? He’s new! This is only like, his first week on the guard! How old you think he is?
Q. 25?
BF. Close! 21! He’s 21. Been training hard since 18 to get a tryout for the guard, and last week he made it. Got his own number 4. If he keeps this up we’ll brand a 69 on him too and see what magic Jared can work with him. He’s just one of thousands. Thousands of Vikings man! I’ve got them everywhere! This dome alone houses 50,000 men with their families! That’s like… five times the population of any city left in the north woods! And you were sent here to negotiate? You and your little ninja? You think a single zero agent and a strike team is going to even worry me? With the suicide vests? That’s old news, Q! I’ve been running counter intelligence on your Guild for years! Years man! I got Swordball in the mail, and I was like; Yes. This is how to build an army of swordsmen. And then I’ll just make them obey me, and then we’ll just take over the whole works. Couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out.
Q. But… Swordball was never meant to be used-
BF. To kill? Who are you kidding, Q? It’s men, with swords, fighting on a field.
Q. But with armor, and technique.
BF. Ah yes, Swashbuckler’s Rules of Engagement? Brilliant. For training. But you can’t make a martial art and then not expect people to kill with it. You just can’t. Look at Van Damme.
Q. I will not.
BF. Whatever, Q. I’m going to execute your team, OK? Let’s just get that out of the way. How are they with swords?
Q. NO! They’re ninja! They only carry the swords for looks! You bastard, if you kill me team the negotiation is off!
BF. Oh yeah! Yeah! You’re a negotiator!
[Sound of laughter (maniacal)]
BF. Well what do you have to threaten me with, Q?! What have you got that’s going to make me not kill you?!
Q. Beginning in Lake Bemidji, and running the length of the Mississippi, there are a series of cargo containers packed with cyanide-bicarbonate set to kill everyone and everything in Minnesota within a week.
BF. … do not.
Q. If you do not command your men to disarm, sign a lasting peace accord with the Guild, and abdicate your throne we will trigger the bombs. If I do not report back within a very tight time frame, we trigger the bombs. There are deep cover agents reporting the activity here, and they may have triggered them already, thinking me dead.
BF. Uh uh.
Q. Yes, Brett, Yes. You have to quit being king, or everyone is going to die. The Guild will not tolerate this barbarism. If we are to survive there must be peace among survivors. If survival of all is not an option, then the Guild will decide who will survive and who will not. Everything down river will waste away. From Itasca to the Delta, our scientists assure us, within less than 1% variation, that America will have no survivors.
BF. But that doesn’t make any sense, Q! Why kill everyone just because of me?
Q. Because slaves and rape do not a society make.
BF. What if I just commanded everyone to stop that?
Q. The terms are set.
BF. Awww… man. What am I supposed to do then? Retire?
Q. The Guild has arranged a palatial estate on Lake Bemidji.
BF. Can I keep my slaves?
Q. No, Brett. No you cannot. You can hire them after you emancipate them, and it will be close to the same thing, but no. You can’t just tell people they are slaves.
BF. We’re going to have to close the mall…
Q. Our Agents can make everything sustainable.
BF. Really?
Q. Really.
BF. OK. OK. Well. Shucks. Guess I better tell the people then…
Q. And I want my sword back.
[End Negotiation Transcript.]
He didn’t take it as bad as I would have expected. You tell a Roman they’re going into exile, they are likely to knife themselves in the bath. For Farve, retirement was a long way in coming. He delivered his retirement speech and ordered his men to stand down. He has been moved to the facility in Bemidji, and I am awaiting further orders. Mission accomplished.
Willfully Submitted,
Q.P. Quaddle
Agent K-00
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