Raven Rock to Marble Mountain

Whathephuque Over, GA. 1872

The big guns fell silent only seven years ago, but the urban heat continues to this day.  When the old boys saw the noobs buying candy bars with credit cards, they knew the paradigm had fallen on its side like a hat fart.  There is still a bunker at Raven Rock where the high-hat shitpokes can (and do) hole up awash in lactating nymphets and booty loot right now.  But this is long before the machine grows sentient. After the introduction of the railroad in 1872, this area grew to become a lively and fashionable vacation community. The railroad ran to Baltimore and many of the city’s elite constructed summer houses there, before the advent of air conditioning, to escape the urban heat. The region was in its hey-day at the beginning of the twentieth century. You believe that. Don’t you.

It’s much worse than you think- a nice Friday trip to the ER*.   Complaint: I can’t breathe.  Well– you’re obviously breathing some… so the robotic system kicks into gear.  And Doktor Kookla is there.  You aint gonna get Gregory House, M.D., so stfu.  The numbers definitely indicate that you’re shutting down somewhat- but it could take hours… even years.  They aint got time for that shit.  You are inside a candy machine.  Plug-and-play boxes are checked and it drops a shareholder-value-creating solution plop.  The pleasant human faces read from the script- but the machine is clearly in charge.  

Keeping peace in the valley.

They ask if you have a pacemaker.  You point to the huge box under your skin and ask if they think this is a fucking radio.  They smile and ask you if you have a heart valve.  OK.  Are they trying to see if you are lucid and aware… or are they just trying to get out of the icky room as soon as possible and back to their screens and a milkshake.  I don’t know- but I got a Cornholio swab anyway and came out rona-free.  That only took 30 minutes.  Pain from broken ribs?  Have a hospital-sized ibuprofen.  By then the big red gethefuckoutofthere light on your panel should be lit up like Rudolph. 

And here’s the best part: “The nurse can do that,” said Dr. Kookla as I was about to begin on the very skillfully-placed and secure IV needle (after pulling off all the hairy glue wires).  Such menial tasks were clearly below Kookla in the hierarchy explaining why they could take all the blood they wanted but couldn’t give *you* any.  It’s against hospital policy etc. and the nurse can only do that after receiving direct order from Kookla etc.  Escaped in time to avoid having a respirator forcibly jammed et. al. The purveyors of pain are at the top. No indictment of Nurse Duckett is intended or implied.

*Emergency Room. The bunker has emergency operations centers for the United States Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Along with Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center in Virginia and the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, it formed the core bunker complexes for the US continuity of government plan during the Cold War to survive a nuclear attack.

Marble Mountain is another story.