There is No 24nsom
2011
...CONTINUED
The Dude spun around in his simple, regular-sized desk chair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with his blonde hair uncovered. His signature black hood hung by the door where we came in. He didn't really react to us, just stared with a blank face. It was like the dramatic reveal of a James Bond villain without any of the villainy.
Harry went over and pulled him up by the arm. "What have you got to say for yourself now, Dude?"
The Dude reached for his computer, but Harry held him tight. He wouldn't look directly at either of us, but he didn't struggle either.
"You remember me?" Harry shook him. "I was Hans for a year. Then you took away my identity."
The Dude looked at his out-of-reach computer, his mouth hanging open, but he was forced to speak for himself. "Hey, careful, man, there's a beverage here."
Harry pulled his ski mask off. The flashlight rig clattered to the floor. "You thought it'd be funny to send me to do all your dirty work." I never asked what Harry did after leaving dispatch.
The Dude stammered. "Look Carl, this is a highly sensitive area and I-- I tell you something, certain people would be very, very embarrassed. I would really appreciate--"
"You can't buy me off like that this time." Harry kept shaking him. "And no more goddamn Breakfast Club. Call me Hans again!"
The Dude held his ground. "Eat my shorts." I assume that was from the Simpsons. Then he looked at me. "Clay. Bill Clay." The words were so exaggerated, I knew he was doing the moment where Hans fakes his identity. The Dude was trying to tell me something.
Harry let go. "So, now you CAN quote Die Hard again."
I shrugged. I didn't want to say he started quoting it to me after Harry was transferred.
The Dude stood up straight and locked eyes with me. "Major Dallas, you have been selected for a mission of the utmost importance."
Harry sat in the Dude's chair, spinning it to face the computer. "Can't save the world now, Dude. You could have, but you didn't want to." He clicked a bunch of stuff in the programs I'll never understand then stopped. "Ah, but I do need your access code."
The Dude looked at Harry and shrugged. "I don't know it. I'm telling you, you're just going to have to shoot me." It was a decent imitation of Takagi from Die Hard, right before he got shot.
Harry spun around and smiled at me. "It really does feel good to be making trouble again." He turned back to the Dude. "I'm going to count to three. There will not be a four. Give me the code." That was another line from the same scene. Then he pulled the pistol from the back of his belt and put it on the desk.
"Holy fuck!" I couldn't keep quiet. It was one thing to feel like I was in a movie, but this was getting way too close to reenacting it. "Harry, is that real?" It looked heavy enough, but with that much adrenaline in my system, nothing felt totally real anymore.
Harry nodded. "One..."
I shook my head. "Wait, let's just kick his ass. It's no big deal."
The Dude really seemed to be thinking hard. He quoted something in a steady voice. "If indeed the insider has failed, they'll sever the connection as soon as possible. Unless... they're dead."
"Two..." Harry had all the confidence of the character he was imitating, which in the movie was more than enough to shoot his hostage.
I stepped forward. "Harry, in the movie, Hans doesn't get the code like this."
The Dude closed his eyes. "In death, a member of Project Mayhem has a name." He was waiting to get shot.
"Three..."
I knew something to say, and I exploded with the line from Fight Club. "Answer him, Raymond. Jesus!"
"Make these your primary action items." The Dude started nodding, almost going into a trance. "Primary action items... Primary action items..."
Harry picked up the gun and aimed.
I held my hands out at Harry, looking at the Dude. "RAY, if someone asks if you're a GOD, you say..."
The Dude shook his head. "It's against my programming to impersonate a deity."
Harry pulled the trigger.
I watched the blood splatter against the wall.
The Dude fell back, sliding down across the splattered blood. His mouth hung open in a silent scream, his eyes frozen wide in shock, staring at the wall opposite him. Then his left hand moved over to cradle the gunshot wound in his right shoulder.
I felt the shakes coming on. It was too much. Something in my mouth tasted bitter. Harry spun the chair to face the computer again. "It won't be that hard to guess. There's only so many movies." He was a cold son of a bitch, just like the real Hans. He deserved the name, if he wanted it back so bad.
The Dude pulled his knees up towards his chest, bringing himself into a fetal position. He was still bleeding pretty bad, but he mumbled. "A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station. Only a precise hit will set off a chain reaction."
I shook my head at the Dude, giving another line from Ghostbusters. "Okay, Ray has gone bye-bye, Egon. What have you got left?" At least I was too freaked out to be tired. "Harry, why don't we just fucking smash it all and go home?"
Harry laughed. "Destroy the system? No, we finally have the chance to use it."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "What?"
The Dude mumbled again. "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed."
Harry turned to him. "Shut up. We're not talking to you."
The Dude kept staring straight ahead. His body rocked forward and back. "I -- I could set the building on fire."
"Keep him quiet." Harry went back to guessing what the password might be.
The Dude stopped rocking and looked at me, his eyes losing focus. He whispered. "This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the--"
"Dude!" Harry shouted, and the Dude went back to staring and rocking, but I know now what movie that line was from -- blue pill, red pill. It was the Matrix.
The red blood from the Dude's arm made a small pool on the ground. His face was getting pale. It must have hurt like a bitch. He was only a couple years younger than us, but he seemed so tiny and harmless right then, a baby-faced marshmallow man without any of the size advantage. I shook my head again. "How you doing over there, Harry?"
Harry kept his back to us. "Don't have the password yet. You got any guesses?"
Now the Dude was mouthing words at me without making noise. "Please help. Please help."
I wanted to. My oldest surviving friend was being a dick, but this was the Dude, right? I spent too long seeing him as absolute evil.
I turned away. "Try typing 'please help'." Old friendships die hard.
Harry did. "Whoa."
A purple lion came up on the monitor, and a rumbling voice came through the wall from the giant speakers in the throne room. "WHO DISTURBS MY SLUMBER?"
The Dude answered, his voice clear. "It is I, Aladdin."
The rumbling voice answered the Dude. "PROCEED. TOUCH NOTHING BUT THE LAMP." I knew that voice, and the purple cartoon lion cave from my childhood could never, ever possibly destroy us, but the movies were all turning real, and so was the danger in them.
Harry reached for the Dude. "Don't say it!"
But the Dude leaned away. "Abu, no!" And then it was too late.
The rumbling voice came on one more time. "YOU HAVE TOUCHED THE FORBIDDEN TREASURE. NOW YOU WILL NEVER AGAIN SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY!"
An alarm buzzed through the house. Harry and I looked at each other.
The adrenaline left me just calm enough to ask one question. "Harry, did you know the house had a self-destruct?"
Harry nodded.
