My Secret Tunnels, my Secret Bases

I have many fantasies, a secret agent alt-persona, who is always needing to get away in a hurry from the scene of my assassinations and bomb based sabotagings.

Alternatively, I accidentally ran over an oldster on my bicycle, and need to get away in a hurry.

I have various imaginings on how this would work. On one hand I have secret dens in nearby woods, or even little stands of trees in town, amidst unsuspecting houses. After doing my mischiefs, I find my nearest hideout, and my individual heat signature pattern opens it up to me and only me…the doors slide back like a mini Tracey Island, brambles and nettles moving with it.

And then I jump in, and the door slides back as if nothing had happened. IR cameras and ground penetrating radar are scrambled. I am totally safe. I have media, books, and a huge supply of rum. I keep changes of clothing inside, and disguises; a machine can bleach my hair straw blond in 5 seconds – envious ladies? – and change my eyes.

I always pick black-brown and bright blue eyes.

All this in a room the size of a living room. Ultrasonic showers. Body waste teleported out of you to the nearest treatment works.

(Reflecting on this, I realise the sci fi novella “A Plague of Demons” has something similar)

The cycle escape routes are a network of tunnels that just open up in the road, and slide me down into 2 metre wide underground Sustrans routes that link up my secret bases.

One minute I’m being chased by helicopters, the next minute I am gone, cycling deep underground with nightvision goggles on, planning my next daring act of subversion.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 30.05.14

Tourettes and the Tunnels of Work

I work in a land fit only for escape; fit only for dreams day and night, dirty plastic floors delivering static shocks into the bodies of the otherwise waking dead. Cockroach traps are insectoid death trap christmas decorations in dark corners; sometimes a bird arrives through the lorry doors and can never get out again.

In the middle of is am I, stressed to the thirteens let alone the nines by the awfulness of it all, body flailing sometimes as somekind of electro chemical surge breaks the barriers of restraint and people try and ignore it and I'm not sure what kind of reaction I want. Not laughter. But not studied ignorance, the pretence of not being bothered.

I don't know what my own head is telling me, and I don't know what I'm trying to tell it.

So I head for the maze, the caves, the world in the racking created by creaking unsafe girders racked by the weight of stores and spares and topped by a thick caking of dust. You stand in the main aisle, it's like The Mines of Moria, stretching way into an artificially lit distance.

Within here the mind wanders and people can be hidden from until the crisis passes. Worlds are visited, words are written on invisible paper with invisible ink and stored until you can go home in a slanting rain. Imagine Maximillian from The Black Hole chasing you down here looking to gut you with his propeller fingers; can you find a turn off in time he'll ignore?

Vader may be awaiting next to the floor cleaning machines, and you won't know if he's being good or evil. Cryogenic suspension tubes litter the top of the racking and you wish you can climb in until the job, or more likely the world, ends in a salvo of violet lightning.

Fight the mech warriors, hide from demons of the darkness.  Or just stand there rocking back on your heels and looking at the radio speakers on the ceiling waiting for the escape route to be broadcast.

Here there are no managers, just other worlds far far better.

I'm creating them every minute.

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Copyright Bloody Mulberry 17/10/2012