Re: The Sugitive - Ch. 2


"Shane" <shanebeatson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Woo4f.2840$cA4.44@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Chapter 2.
>
> I awoke on my back, in the middle of a haystack. After my inadvertent acid
> trip of the day before, I felt wonderful, rejuvenated, at peace; my mind
> was
> clear and sharp! I rolled over and was stuck by a little prick, and it
> came
> rushing back to me - OMIGAWD! SUGIEN! Even now I almost turned for home;
> but
> then I pictured him, his elbow in the bidet, knew I owed him everything
> and
> could not abandon him in his hour of need. I guess it was a good omen that
> I'd already found the needle. Now all I had to do was my ablutions, and
> sort
> the wheat from my chuff.
>
> Back on the dirt track the 666 had become, listening to the rhythmic drone
> of one of the Viper's mufflers dragging along the road, my mind drifted
> back
> to the Café Wa La!
>
> I'd been treading water at my table for fifteen minutes when Garçon the
> waiter swam over and took my order. "COFFEE!" I shouted, "Vooz
> know...COFFEE!" and made the international sign for drinking coffee. An
> Oberleutnant at the next table gave me an uncomfortably quizzical look. I
> continued to peruse the menu and, when Garçon returned with the coffee, I
> gave the code I'd been taught under hypnosis back in Moorgate (Essex):
> "Quelles sont les fritures de liberté?". "Ah!" he said, arching an eyebrow
> and gesturing with it towards a table in the middle of the Seine: "Vont
> avec
> le grand masturbator, il est un expert en matière de fritures de
> liberté!".
> I glanced nonchalantly in the direction he'd indicated, to a man who at
> first sight looked seedy enough to be a collaborator. He was floating with
> the buoyancy of a bag of wind, bobbing on the bow wave of a passing
> bateux-mouche, leering like a pederast, with a french fry sticking out of
> each nostril to the evident delight of the squad of Stormtroopers with
> whom
> he was pretending RL friendship. That was the first time I set eyes upon
> Sugien.
>
> I nursed my coffee until Garçon slipped me a note. It told me to be at the
> same table at noon the following day, but Sugien didn't show. Little did I
> know then, that in not doing so he'd saved my life!
>
> Two weeks later I hitched passage on a tramp steamer to Algiers, made my
> way
> to Tripoli by camel then got a ride to Alexandria in an ambulance with a
> Capt. Anson and entourage, only to learn I'd been seconded to a new
> Commando
> unit (that would become famous as The Desert Rats) at present training in
> the Western Desert. Imagine my shock to find, upon joining my new unit,
> that
> the OIC was none other than the enigmatic fellow from the Café Wa La!,
> (Capt.) Sugien!
>
> It was a command that would lead to one of the most famous and decisive
> incidents of the Second World War, when Sugien was captured by (and
> escaped
> from), the Afrika Korps. In 1953 this brew-ha-rofl (in an excellent
> example
> of American heroism being attributed to the British), saw Sugien portrayed
> as a Scot by Richard Burton in director Robert Wise's movie "The Desert
> Rats". One glaring inaccuracy was how, in the movie, during interrogation
> whilst having a gunshot wound attended to, Capt. MacRoberts does not say
> "Phooey!" to Rommel, as Sugien did in real life. The incident is omitted
> in
> it's entirety, thus rendering the suspension of disbelief ultimately
> unsustainable. Once MacRoberts had escaped - without having said "Phooey!"
> to the legendary Field Marshall, shaking him and undermining his authority
> to a degree he would never quite recover from - the audience was waiting
> for
> Wilson, Kepple and Betty to shuffle into shot!
>
> Incidentally, Wise - who seemingly had a chip on his shoulder where this
> capital fellow was concerned - was, after the war, inspired by Sugien's
> unguarded and uncharacteristically unsubtle intimation that all who wish
> ill
> of him end up murdered, to cast Paul Newman as boxer Cacky Sugiano in
> 1956's
> "Nobody Up There Likes Me!" The story, about a punchy prize fighter who
> makes extravagant threats to his opponents during the weigh-in but always
> finds an excuse not to go into the ring, of course, bombed. It was obvious
> who it lampooned; and Senator McCarthy - for whom Sugien was a role
> model -
> was particularly scathing. Newman's career was fortunate to recover, and
> tellingly, Wise died a mere forty-nine years later!
>
> As an aside, it never fails to astound me the sheer number of movies this
> man inspired! After meeting him pre-war, WC Fields based probably his
> second
> most famous character on Sugien in 1940's "The Wank-***". That was
> followed
> in 1941 by the adaptation of Sugien's First World War memoirs for the
> silver
> screen, whereby he was portrayed by Gary Cooper in Howard Hawks' seminal
> morale-booster "Sergeant Pork" (which title owed more than a little to
> Cockney Rhyming Slang). In fact I planned on seeing, whilst in Ohio, the
> tree in the woods outside Chillicothe on which is said to be carved those
> famous words "P. Briunt cilled a bar on tree in year 1760 wich im abut
> aterclock rund year".
>
> I suddenly realised I was lost! Something something Amarillo, Gallup New
> Mexico, Tucson Arizona something something something. Was I headed in the
> wrong direction? Should I have turned left at Albuqueque?
>
> I saw a sign for "White Sands National Monument". Ah! That rang a bell.
> Wasn't it round hereabouts Sugien put together the Manhattan Project? I
> remember hearing the rumour - later confirmed in the General's authorised
> biography - that Grove insisted Sugien put an end to his top secret
> missions
> to the European Theater and personally oversee the day-to-day running of
> the
> effort to build the world's first atomic bomb; while Sugien was adamant he
> retain the ability to leave for the front at a moment's notice, and that
> he
> train up an assistant to do the donkey-work. General Grove, a man's man
> and
> a career soldier of the old school, challenged Sugien to a bare-knuckle
> fight to decide whether Sugien, or the young scientist attached to him on
> Work Experience - J. Robert Oppenheimer - should remain on site until a
> weapon was ready. With one punch Sugien turned the General's spine to
> jello
> and it was Oppenheimer, not Sugien, who went down in history as the
> Destroyer of Worlds!
>
> Notably, the fist-fight incident was omitted from *all* cinematic versions
> of this most important event of the 20th century, despite almost every
> soldier in the Allied forces having heard of it. I guess Sugien's heroics
> are so ultra-secret they'll never be subject to FOI. It's just reassuring
> that for so many Americans, evidence is superfluous. Faith is all they
> need.
> Even my hire-car Dodge Viper had a bumper sticker proferring the simple
> acronymic advice "WWSD".
>
> It was here, at White Sands, that Sugien's interest in the possibility of
> self-replicating computer code as a weapon was born. And just as that
> thought occurred to me I was woken out of my reverie by a loud clatter, as
> the rear bumper fell off and bounced along the road! I pulled over, got
> out
> and took a whiz on a rock. There was an ominous rattling sound, then bits
> of
> snake flesh splattered into the air! I pissed on my shoe as I took a step
> backward and looked around for any sign of animation. After about 10
> seconds
> I heard a rifle crack, then silence.
>
>
>
> Next week: the stuff that was supposed to be in this week's offering
> (perhaps)!
>
Now I know where you went those several day you disappeared. It took
you that long to write that piece of crap? I know I have you under my
control when you feel compelled to write such ramblings. I know what it is
that *made* you write it. You can't handle me in a battle of wits; because
you have no wits with which to battle. So you take you paranoia and you
inferiority complex and write this trash. I would not mind if it were good;
but this is a mad mans delusions put to pen.
Now get cracking on the rest of it, I *COMMAND* you to do so, and of
course you can not. I suspect you will come back with some stupid ***
about how I can't command you; but you *will* write it just the same;
because I am now firmly in your subconscious and there like a combination
computer and biological virus I will stay. There is nothing you can do to
remove me from your mind. Your are getting stupider, and stupider, rofl


--
"Talent does what it can; genius does what it must."
- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873)
So don't blame me because I must do what I can



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