So today I took a cab home from the Metro Station because I didn't feel like waiting in the rain for the bus to show up late.
Cab rides are always awkward for me. I'm terrible at making small talk, so the rides are usually me giving short replies to the cabbie's inane questions.
Today was different. Today was wierd.
The guy seemed cool enough, an older, kinda fat dude with a salt-and-pepper beard, tortoiseshell glasses, and wearing a fleece vest over a polo shirt. We made the usual chitchat, talking about the shitty weather we've been having lately, local sports, nothing major.
Until I made the mistake of letting it slip that I work in DC.
"DC, huh?" says the cabbie. "You don't for them, do you?"
It was at this point that I realized I was going to be in for one interesting ride.
I played stupid "Them who?"
"The government, maaaan." Stifle your laughter. Hold your breath. Bite your tongue.
"No, I'm an IT Consultant for a firm based out of DC. We serve many different clients in many different industries," says I.
"Hmmph. Well just watch out for them. You ever read a book called Puzzle Palace?" he asked.
"Can't say that I've ever heard of it, honestly," was my truthful reply.
"Well, it's all about the NSA. You know the NSA, the National Security Agency?" He took both hands off the wheel to do finger-quotes when he said the word "Security"
"Oh yeah, I've heard of them. They're pretty important, huh?" I replied.
"Yeah, real important. Did you know that they used to shop at the same grocery stores as the 9/11 mastermind hijackers?! The same fucking Safeway!! There's no way they could not have known what they were up to. I bet they even parked next to each other!!" says my Mulder-esque cheauffer.
At this point, I was honestly afraid I was going to start laughing and the next thing I know I'd be smelling choloform and tied up in this crazy fuck's basement while he smacks me in the face with copies of Catcher In The Rye and The 9/11 Commisson's Report.
"Wow, that's pretty interesting. I never knew that." I replied, hoping that he'd either trail off or that we'd plunge a little deeper down the rabbit hole.
We go a few fractions of a mile farther down the road in silence. We turn onto a street a few blocks from my building when he asks me, in all seriousness, "You ever heard of Cold Fusion?"
Curiouser and curiouser. I think I see the White Rabbit hustling down the sidewalk.
"Yeah, I have. That's a way to create basically limitless energy, right?"
"It sure is! Back in the 80's I was working as a government contractor out of my basement. I had a very rudimentary lab but me and a few of my buddies were contracted out to perform experiments on Cold Fusion. Left here? Ok. Anyway, one day I got back from the grocery store and I saw that my door had been unlocked without first removing the invisible tape across the doorjam that I kept there for just such an occasion. Well I went down to my laboratory and didn't notice anything too weird, but I started leaving markers in my research. You know what a marker is? It's a specific phrase that you look for so if someone steals your research and publishes it as their own you can spot the marker and call them out on it! Well, a few months later I found an article in Popular Science that used one of my markers! I immediately called the FBI who referred me to Judge Lawrence Walsh. You know who that is? That was one of the Judges in the whole Iran-Contra affair! He was a stooge to Oliver North! And you know what that judge told me? He told me I should just keep it quiet and keep working. Oliver North's cronies were breaking in to my laboratory and stealing my research and I was supposed to just keep it quiet! I know what he was doing, he was giving my research to his buddies at the National Laboratories in Los Alamos so they could do experiments involving time travel! Well, I hope old Ollie North and his Los Alamos buddied are enjoying their time machine because I rigged the research! I made one intentional error on one of the equations, and if they ever manage to get it working, all it's gonna do is send 'em in to an endless loop where they become unstuck in time and jump back and forth between dimensions. Hahahaha I sure got 'em good. Alright, so that's 12.85."
Ok, so maybe there's a bit of hyperbole, but that's the gist of what this guy was telling me. That back during the 80's he was working on Cold Fusion in his basement and Oliver North broke in and stole his research and gave it to Los Alamos National Laboratory so they could make time machines but this guy was smart, and rigged his research so that it would fail.
I thank the guy, paid him, and got out of the cab. I had intentionally made him drop me at another building, because I sure as fucking didn't want him to know where I lived.
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