The Duke
by Michael Thomas

***

By the time the machine got its name, only a few of us knew what it originally was. The five of us at the back table in the restaurant, the last one of a dwindling smoking section , had been there on the first days when the feed was only beamed from some unknown location into a back room of an office in a mostly abandoned commercial space, responders to the same classified ad:

WANTED: Researchers from multiple disciplines for an experiment in the Social Sciences. Observe the effects of isolation on human subjects in a foreign environment. Starting pay $15/hour. Apply at the Schaffer Building, XXXX XXXXXX Ave. at 9am XX/XX/06.

When we went there the first day, we expected a bustling research building, we got empty spaces only occupied by the world's most standard administrative assistant. A woman in her 30s, blonde, blue eyes, around 5'8" 140lbs. No notable psychological trauma. Pleasant. With instructions to proceed to room 112 on the main floor and to "Feel free to have a snack."

Each day at 9, we'd report to room 112, empty except for a table, five chairs, a cooler in the back corner with Evian, Diet Coke, and Gatorade, a box of sandwiches made by the "sandwich artists" at Subway, and a television that we sat around during the process. At around 9:15 a live feed from some unknown location would come on showing us a person in a room with no visible doors or windows, just a few overhead lights, a straw floor, and a chair with a button on the arm. The reactions were usually the same. First, fear and disorientation. The subject would look wildly about, check the walls, pound them, and then see the chair in the center of the room. They'd notice the button, and the connection of the wire to a mechanical arm holding a needle containing some unknown solution. Then, anger. Screaming, shouting, first defiantly, then with the desire to bargain, pleading, crying. Normally around lunch the fit would last long enough to get a sandwich. For those who decided to give their emotions full play, I had time for a cigarette.

Around 1pm the Subjects would exhibit signs of depression, no more crying, just visible sadness. Typically a verbalized taking of accounts, a self monologue that convinced them their former life had been worth living. Mostly compelling stories, or at least standard with regard to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If they weren't satisfied before, they seemed so now. Then, around 8, when staying in the office would seem out of the question, it would happen. They'd go to the chair, push the button and fall limp. The sheet we were given by the Secretary, possibly two children, married as evidenced by the ring on her right hand, unhappily (see tear smeared mascara), said it contained a non-toxic solution that would cause temporary unconsciousness, but not death. They never saw the camera. The feed would die and we'd compose reports, leaving a copy with the secretary and another in files for ourselves to compile final observations at the conclusion of the project.

The change began after Subject 58, African American female, mid to late 60s, grey hair, glasses, slightly overweight, who began her time not in anger but a strange calm as she examined the walls of the room and her surroundings. After taking a thorough survey of the room, she took her place in the chair (12pm a new record) and, unsuspectingly she stared directly into the camera. "After what I've seen", she said, "whatever you mother fuckers want to do here isn't worth my participating. I hear the voices that have been here before me and it's a terrible thing. I refuse to give you the satisfaction of my tears, the sight of those is saved for the ones I love and not for cowards who hide behind screens and cameras to take away my life. I hope you find what you're lookin for." And then, calmly, with the type of courage that is never befitting self-preservation but only rears its head in a drive for destruction, she pushed the button and fell limp in the chair.

That afternoon, we went to the diner early for coffee after submitting our reports, and then the phenomenon happened. On the televisions normally showing repetitions of sports highlights and the shitty local news came the feed normally reserved for the office, starting with session one. The yokels, eating their chicken fried steak with rice and collard greens, stopped and stared at the screen, fixed on the screams and crying that we had observed in the lab environment. To their shock, Nancy, the waitress, white, early to late 40s, 5'6", 180lbs, divorced, couldn't change the channel. Every station was tuned into the isolated room and the vision of untimely demise. The customers left that day, partially disgusted, partially intrigued, but unable to see more.

After the feed had established itself as a restaurant staple, it became the event for which patrons began to frequent the diner. It was a show, they assumed, and they watched, intrigued, to see the reactions of the characters. They had no idea that the ones they seemed to ridicule the most, had the reactions that we at the smoking table knew they would exhibit. Nascar Asshole, 6'1" 280lbs, who called subject 36 a "pussy" for crying and begging for his wife and daughter would show the same reaction if brought to the chair. Those big cheeks that he stuffs daily with his overdose of beef tips and mashed potatoes would be covered in tears as he blubbered, for at least 3 hours we calculated, before dragging his sorry corpse to the machine and pushing the button like a frighten child. House Marm, 5'2", 125 lbs, who looks fixed at the screen and talks about how much more composed she'd be would do no such thing. Based upon our observations, there would be only an hour of anger, followed by 4 of crying (the last for begging), then, a lengthy confession, which comes with all the women of her type, where they bemoan their sins in the hope that the God they only tacitly believed in before will forgive them and save them in a final miracle. They always have to sit in the chair for at least an hour, horrified, still crying, before the push the button, still unresigned, still with reluctance to take their only chance at freedom.

Now, here in the machine, I know that they're watching. I know that the ones who have been here before were not unconscious, but dead. I can smell the feces from when their bowels loosened on their death, and can see traces of blood that have escaped from them. Although I have never smelled a corpse, I have read enough about the stench of death to know that it's what now fills my nostrils, and I know I have one choice. Facing the camera, I give them a look so that they know I can see their faces. The same look Subject 58 gave that followed our eyes wherever we turned our faces, making sure we knew she saw in and through the process. Giving this look, I sit in the chair and face the camera. Without speaking (why should I give them the benefit of my words), I simply stare and push the button. As I die here, I only hope that my eyes stay open so that they can still see me staring at them, even in death._-MLT

The Screaming Front:
Part III, Russian Roulette
by Mike Schwalk

***

The war was over now and spiteful, slovenly Russian red howlers stampeded the rubble of Grozny hoping to flush out the odd Chimpanazi that had not already fallen. Commandant Bobo could feel his heart explode in his chest. Hiding in a pile of corpses that used to be the battalion he commanded, playing dead, biding his time. Bobo was sure that the sound of his heart would tip off the drunken, degenerate silverbacks.

Steady Bobo, he thought. Return to center. You're smarter enough to get out of this. You can triumph always.

Bobo wormed through the pile at glacial pace, careful not to make any jerky or unnecessary movements, until his head was towards the outer shell of the body heap. With cold deliberation he observed the disorderly howlers--watched their movements--discerned who were the sergeants, the lieutenants and the real leaders. He could tell that the lieutenant was having some degenerate inter-species homosexual love affair with a communications officer. He noticed the foot soldier who won too many games of poker. He watched the Siberian troops dance competitively with the Moscow corps.

Slow and sure Bobo dug a piece of shrapnel out of a corpse. Not ideal, but it would do.

Day turned into night and back into day again. All the while Bobo heard the occasional crack of a gun in the distance, but sometimes the shots were close. Bobo knew he was playing a dangerous waiting game: every four hours the recon troops would return and add their fresh kills to the pile. They would then discharge their weapons into the jumbled mass of corpses before mess. How long could he will the bullets out of his way? How long could he play dead, anticipating the bullet that would miss his head by just a fraction of an inch? Always imagine the one that's close, Bobo. All else is folly.

That night after the drunken frenzy that was the red howlers’ victory celebration, Bobo made his move. The poor slob set to guard the pile was easy meat. Bobo shoved his fist deep into the guard's snoring maw, jabbing his finger deep enough to break the vocal chords all the while working his shiv up and under the ribs and into the heart.

Bobo then unsheathed the guard's knife and sawed off his left paw. Bobo kissed the palm and made a wish.

Twenty stupefied drunk howlers took turns gang-raping some emaciated teenage refugees over swigs of vodka. Bobo could see that one of them had already died, a fact lost on the group who were chanting their comrade on. They won’t want to remember this anyway, Bobo though as he rolled a grenade wrapped in a sock towards the bastards.

...3...2...1

The camp lit up like daylight and as disoriented howelrs scuttled to their post they found themselves running full-stride into nets of razor wire and makeshift booby-traps. Bobo had lined his position with the staked heads of the camp brass. He hunkered behind his sandbags and kissed the monkey's paw yet again and made another wish. Then he got behind the .50 and clutched the triggers.

Feeling the intense jerking of the gun unloading in his hands made Bobo feel strangely empowered and simultaneously unhinged as if he were somehow connected to a volcano or earthquake or thunder or some other primal destructive force in the earth.

He moved the gun like a fire hose over the waves of stumbling reds.

"You don't get me, motherfuckers!" Bobo screamed over and over again. "You don't get me!" -MAS