Linchpin

#1: Memento Mori, anyone?

I sit up in bed, suddenly, quietly, and a cold chill runs down my spine.
Where am I? How long have I been here? What am I doing?
I don't remember my name, where I'm from... nothing... what's going -
>HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! What's up, hero?!
I start in the darkness and look around. That voice was definitely not mine.
>Hahahahaha!
I whip my head from side to side. Where is he?
The room is empty. I look to the ceilings, the walls, I grope my ears. No ear phones or speakers.
>Look around, son. You have no idea how you got here, you probably don't even remember your hair color... do you?
I had to agree with the phantom voice. I rotated in the bed, and swung my legs down to stand up. As my feet hit the floor, a resounding thud shook the walls... or so I thought? A second step proved reaffirmation of this fact.
Looking down, I was surprised to find I was not naked, and looking around I was also surprised to find I was not back in my high school. The walls were whitewash and nothing -
>Hey bub, this isn't time to be admiring the scenery.
Ah Christ, I'm schizophrenic.
>If you were schizophrenic you'd think a huge corporation was after you for your sensitive bits and what's in your head, now wouldn't you?
Something tells me he's being sarcastic. Or ME being sarcastic. Or us being sarcastic. How can you be sarcastic with yourself?
>*chuckle*
I took a hesitant step, doing my best to stare straight forward so the Eastwood in my head would keep his trap shut. I lifted my right foot and brought it down softly, and this time it didn't shake the pictures off of the walls (had there been pictures in this dismal cube,) but rather a sound like solid boots down a tiled hallway. A good thud. But still heavy.
Must be a wood floor under the tiles.
Ten feet away from me was a small mirror above a plain sink, set into cinder blocks against a similar cinder block wall. A flourescent light hung right above the mirror, and a drawstring switch dangled from it by a beaded chain. I reached up and pulled the string, and took a good look at myself.
I guess I must be in my late twenties, early thirties. My face looks like it's been mashed up a few times. My hair feels like it's too long, although it's still relatively short. My eyes, something about them...
>What did you expect? Gregory Peck?
The scary thing is I didn't know what to expect.
>Of course you didn't.
This is gonna get old quick.
>Get used to it.
I turned away from the mirror, and turned instead towards the room that I was in. In a pile on the floor, next to a simple cot, lay a suit of armor, helmet, clothes, equipment, and propped up next to all of that was a ridiculous size weapon. No man should be able to lift that. That should be mounted on a vehicle.
>You can lift it.
Bullsh*t.
>Try.
I took babysteps towards the weapon, feeling the anticipation in every step as I could feel that I was about to prove Dirty Harry wrong... the whole two minutes of it I knew of. I grasped a rung that connected between four barrels, and sure enough hefted it into the air with one arm.
Damn it.
>Get dressed.
Where are we going? The theatre? We going to see some opera? I've always wanted to see "Cats."
>That figures, hero. You wanna go see Cats and you haven't even checked to see if you've got your junk yet.
So of course I looked down. Groped. And it was still there.
>Of course it's there, you idiot. Put that sh*t on and get ready.
Get ready for what?
>Well, if I told you I'd have to kill you.
Wouldn't you be killing yourself then. Is that a suicidal tendency?
>A suicidal tendency is provoking me to plant my 8.5 squarely up your fresh a**.
How can a schizophrenic personality plant a foot up my a**?
>Hahaha... This is gonna be fun.
I had to grin, despite the situation.

>Go ahead, put it on.
It looks like an Iron Maiden in there.
>It won't hurt.
Liar.
>Come on... *chuckle*... put it on. Would I lie to you?
You're an a**hole.
I sighed and looked inside the helmet one more time. The outside was a sleek black, with a small red visor bowing across the front. Inside were thousands of needle-small nodules, and it looked none too inviting.
I'm hideous anyway. I slipped the helmet over my head.
The first thing I felt was immense pressure all over my head, like a collapsing hull of a submarine underwater. Almost instantaneously, a burning surge covered my entire skull, like the feeling when you pull a neck muscle. The burning travelled down to my chest, and stopped at my heart, where the burning pain and pressure faded seconds after it reached that point. My eyes seemed to turn off, and what I sensed was like a scene out of an old sci-fi movie. I could see everything, in every way possible. Thermal, nightvision, x-ray, you name it, all I had to do was think it and there it was.
High speed.
>Look at your right palm.
Looking at my palm, I could see what looked like a small piercing hole.
>Surprised there's no hair?
Ha. Ha.
>Look at the grip of your rifle.
Oh look, a small lancet. I wonder where that goes.
>You're catching on.
Sure enough, sinking the lancet into my palm resounded a small clicking feeling from my hand, and from then on I had a crosshair in my vision. Just like the movies.
Let me guess, Harry. I come equipped with an MP3 player, too.
>I thought you'd never ask.
Sure enough, overlayed with my hearing was just that: music.
"If you can be my bodyguard, I can be your long lost palll..."
Smarta**.
>*chuckle* I'll call you Betty. You can call me Al.

Looking in the small mirror above the sink, fully clothed, I looked like Hannibal Lecter in the mask, with a silvery plated jumpsuit and a ridiculously large assault rifle. The selection of music Al decided to play was ancient music, the current selection being a song titled, "Tarzan Boy." Al had a unique sense of humor, it seemed. Monkey business in a strange land, eh? What's next? Martains?
>*laugh* Of course, and the mariachi band playing the Star Spangled Banner.
I suppose if I check out some chick you're gonna know exactly what I'm thinking.
>Yup. I might even take over and spout it out for you. Or whip it out.
Great. Just great.
>Look in your left hip pocket, hero.
Hell, why not. I shoved my hand into my pocket, and brought out a small photograph. On the photograph was a face, and what wasn't punctured by what looked to be blackish rubber dots was pale beyond comparison. The face was female, and obscured by a hand.
>We have a task here, hero.
Dress up like a woman in someone else's skin and kidnap her and put her in a well?
>... *laugh*
Haha.
>Not what I had planned.
So what are we doing?
>If I told you now, I'd have to kill you.
What if I decided to go to the strip club instead?
>Ever heard this song?
As I stepped out the door, I heard the whimsical melody of "Welcome to the Machine." Something told me it was going to be a long day.

#2: Lesser of two evils

...some time ago...

It's been ten days since I have seen a meal that isn't out of a bag or sold to me by the kids who come to our area of operations. The kids smile viciously as we buy the rancid meat because it's better than the bags of prepared food the government feeds us. The sh*t tastes like it was made ten years ago, and if you look on the packages, some of it was.
Our "area of operations" was nothing more than a water plant with high walls around it in a city besieged by war. The water, possibly infected with hepatitis, was undrinkable and instead we had to sustain ourselves on the water we rationed from bottles we had brought with us. Two hundred of us slept against the walls, on concrete with our helmets as pillows and our body armor as blankets. We lived out of our small backpacks, termed "assault packs." We battled the various creatures of the desert, including scorpions, snakes, arthropod spiders with a horrific bite, and issues with hygeine and cleanliness. Borderline dysentery from two hundred men sharing two toilets. We worked twenty hour shifts with four hours of sleep. But we did our best there, and we did it well.
I was awoken by my squad leader, a lanky man of aryan and latin descent named Klue. "Get your sh*t on, we got to go."
So that's just what I did. I packed everything in my assault pack, strapped on my armor and helmet, and grabbed my weapon. We assembled outside, at the front of the plant. I was already sweating from the oppressive heat of the night.
We marched out into the war zone, only seven of us. It was going to be a fun night.

#3: Pop Fiction

>This place is like a neo Tokyo after the Misfits hit town. Everyone's got some kind of hair color, at some kind of flippy length, and everyone seems to be wearing leather or nylon. And everyone has a weapon, whether it's a melee weapon or a rifle. You'll fit right in. Just like Blade Runner.
I look like a barbie biker b*tch with a Dillon minigun.
>That's barbie biker BAR b*tch.
I stepped outside of the hallway, which happened to be a hallway connecting fourteen dorm-like rooms on the third floor of a tall building. Stepping outside, the first thing I noticed is that everything was flourescent; the lights, advertisements and strobes. And the sound, like a wall of noise, slamming into you. People thronged the street, and as Al said every single one of them had a gun and a flippy hairdo or some kind of bondage suit on.
>Alright hero, we're going to the bar.
What for?
>We're gonna steal a ride.
Come the f*ck on, Al. You get me all this high speed sh*t and pretend like you're a seperate entity talking to me, and you didn't steal a car? You suck.
>You think that sh*t you're wearing is high speed?
I didn't dare answer him, because I didn't know.
For the next hour, I took directions and travel information from Al as we walked through the town, taking a left when he told me to or going up an escalator or through a door. Within an hour, we stood in front of a menacing door that looked like a garage band's nightmare, with blue light streaming out of it and it GROWLED.
>So check this out. That's a modular cellular demodulating supercalifragilisic banana teleporter.
You have no idea what it is, do you?
>Just get in and shut up.
So I did. The door closed behind me and now I was in a blue box. Kind of like a smurf's -
>Turn around.
As I did, it looked like the door was coming at me, about to smash my melon into a preserve paste. I braced myself with my arms in front of me and let out a scream.
Nothing happened. I opened my arms and the door was open again, this time with much different scenery. Gone were the concrete jungles, but now I could see a sloping hill and trees. In the distance above the growling of the supercalifragilistic teleporter, I could hear music and laughing.
A party.